Fun? Interest? Boredom? Does there have to be a deeper purpose or sense behind everything one does?
I fail to see the final purpose of this exercise…
I’ve created this list for my own purpose. I plan to go flying for a couple of days next week and wanted to know which airports other pilots find interesting.
Interesting…
The UK list is headed by Jersey which, while perenially popular and GA-friendly, is difficult to fly to from the UK due to the 12hr police notice, and I would not say it gets the most GA traffic of that list, by a long way. And how many would fly to Jersey without flying via the UK?
But then the eddh.de airport data website seems to get much of its data from a small number of pilots who diligently continue to populate the database, so the data may well be slanted. Would most of the data come from German pilots?
Would most of the data come from German pilots?
I certainly think so, to judge by their names and their writing.
On a more general note: as private flyers we all have our preferences and these may be quite different, even contrary: some require 2 km of hard runway, with PAPI’s if not a full ILS, others prefer 500 metres of grass. Some consider a taxi ride into town, for dinner and for an acceptable lodging, an essential (or unavoidable) bit, others look for a field with a decent eatery and bring a tent in hopes of camping on the field. To each their own… but what database is going to sort out those preferences?
So I think the exercise may help to pass time on unflyable days but has little use for actual planning. Better to peruse the various flying forums and read flight reports of the appropriate style/type.
IMHO this listing is useful to see what sort of places are popular and thus reasonably well organised for GA flights.
It is thus a good starting point for planning trips.
Most private pilots fly purely for leisure and are very sensitive to inconvenience and hassle, hence in the UK we get so much traffic doing dead easy flights between e.g. the south coast airports and Sandown and Bembridge, with the more adventurous making the epic and hazardous journey to Le Touquet. The list in this thread could highlight other nice destinations for non-German pilots (I am sure Germans know their favourite places already).
I am not surprised Mali Losinj LDLO comes out top for Croatia – it is the German equivalent of Le Touquet for Brits 
although a far more scenic flight and a lot nicer in almost every other way (L2K has the walk near the woods which is really nice).
lenthamen wrote:
ENCN KRISTIANSAND – KJEVIK – 13 votes – 60 points
ENBN BRÖNNÖYSUND – 9 votes – 57 points
ENSH SVOLVAER – HELLE – 9 votes – 56 points
ENBR BERGEN – FLESLAND – 13 votes – 55 points
ENVA TRONDHEIM – VAERNES AB – 5 votes – 51 points
ENFY FYRESDAL – 6 votes – 50 points
ENBO BODÖ – 7 votes – 49 points
ENKJ KJELLER AB – 4 votes – 47 points
ENTC TROMSÖ – LANGNES – 4 votes – 46 points
ENEV HARSTAD/NARVIK – EVENES – 4 votes – 46 points
Except Kjeller and Fyresdal (and why Fyresdal of all things?), all of these are Avinor airports (commercial scheduled flights, massive security). None of the popular GA airports are here like Tynset, Oppdal, Starmoen, Bjorli, Notodden and many more. Nothing wrong with Avinor Airports (except they don’t seem to care much for GA the way they stop supplying Avgas, one by one), but they are not GA airports like Starmoen and Kjeller for instance.
I think, very likely, within any given country, the airports visited by “foreigners” will be substantially different to those visited by “locals”.
Where I live, south east UK, I see a pile of “strongly GA” airports which get most of the “burger run” traffic (especially the traffic where people just fly to the airport, pay the £10 and never get off it and then fly back) but most of them are not places a foreigner would fly to. They might be cheap and might sell this but most have no IFR facilities, many are grass (BTW I got a number of emails from pilots who would not have flown to the originally proposed Venice/Lido fly-in because it is grass) and most internationally travelling pilots have IRs and fly IFR.
Obviously there are many exceptions and a good number of them live on EuroGA (one guy in particular just jumps into his RV and flies more or less anywhere ) but that’s the overall picture, and if you look for pilots who will spend time updating an airport database, you might get unexpected data. I think most of the foreign pilots I bump into at UK airfields are not on any pilot forum I have ever heard of.
Then you get the non-Schengen traffic will has to avoid a large % of airports within Europe for their first stop… Most of France is inaccessible but I bet you most French pilots do not fly to the airports that have Customs/Immigration… they fly to the little “club” airfields. And not everybody likes stopping to clear Schengen. It wastes 1-2 hours, plus the costs, and introduces wx risks because you can descend through a lot of wx which you cannot later safely climb back up through.
most internationally travelling pilots have IRs and fly IFR
Hm. Any numbers to support that? It is not what I see at my home field – but then I am in a small country, where one can hardly fly 100 NM in a straight line without crossing a border.
As for the poor ( … ) who will not fly to grass runways: limited prop clearance (Mooney?) is the only valid excuse. Oh yes, and a pusher propeller, too.
limited prop clearance (Mooney?) is the only valid excuse. Oh yes, and a pusher propeller, too.
You might like to see how much of the tyre sticks out of the wheel cowling on a current model SR22.
I stand corrected.
