@Bart, there is actually one factor not accounted for in your survey – the general difference in pricing levels between countries/regions. For example, I stopped flying to EBLG on the way from Prague to the UK once they raised the minimum fee from €14 to €40, but it’s mostly because there were other airports nearby, either charging lower fees (e.g. EBCI) or giving a better value for a similar fee (e.g. EBAW is also about €40, but you get to use the crew lounge where you can take a shower and sleep overnight). At the same time, there are places where €40 for an overnight stop would be considered very reasonable, and there are some where even €14 is considered a bit too steep according to your survey (e.g. LKVO).
Hi All,
Please find below kind of the last update of the survey results. For the next stage – Legal action against pricing of some airports/handler and funds gathering – I will open a new thread soon.
Many thanks to everyone who devoted 2 min of their time, we managed to get over 90 surveys filled, it is some substantial pool.
Conclusions ? – everyone can draw them by themselves, I think the graphs below are pretty self explaining.
What strucks me personally, it is the group consensus around the question no 4. Almost 66 % of us state that the problem of GA price ban has its source in cheap airlines expansion. Also the answers for question no 6 look terrifying, we have a firm evidence that the safety of our flying is being jeopardized.
No one wants to act against commercial airliners, the CAT flying development is a positive process in many aspects. But it looks that GA in Europe is currently a real victim of it, a victim of primitive “capacity management” practices of airports, once CAT business gets momentum…
We need to do everything we can to get a firm protection of our rights to fly. Petitions won’t help, either we will find a way to get to some real, legal pressure onto such abusers, or we need to forget a growing number of airports we used to fly to. Because once having a substantial CAT business – they do not want to be bothered by us and our passengers anymore.
In some countries, with better aero club/local infrastructure – this pain is maybe not that severe. But from a large part of Europe people have already reported problems (please look at the graphs of Greece, England, Italy, Spain, France etc.) – this cancer will only get bigger, in line with cheap carriers expansion and reactions of airports for that.
End of the survey thread, please look for the follow up of “Legal action against pricing of some airports/handler and funds gathering” that will be published soon.
Below please find the visualization of answers for the question no 3, based on ICAO codes that were given as the response:
They could tarmac the area but I am guessing that the cost of doing so would not get recovered, from extra GA parking and extra landing fees.
It costs very little to tarmac a bit of ground, well enough for piston GA.
If this was an issue, no “GA” airport would have any hard surfaces.
I seem to remember that Bristol had various motives for limiting or excluding non-passenger traffic, which benefited Gloucester (EGBJ) and this helped finance EGBJ’s new ILS.
Hello DA40drvr,
Thank you, message taken. For sure we need to take into account also situations like that, but I would say it is more kind of an exception than typical… Before moving to the next step I am preparing the summary of our survey, please look at that, I think the core of the problem is clearly visible in the responses. But once again – this is very true what you point at, the airports realities are far from being black/white.
Hi Bart,
It may not be relevant to some airports, but reference EGGD (Bristol) the situation seems not so straightforward. Disclosure: my aircraft is based there.
For GA visitors the landing fee is high. But it is actually quite low for those who are based there, ‘handled’ by the designated club/handler (as are the approach and parking). The issue is lack of GA parking space; there is none spare. There is a waiting list where the on-airfield GA club wants to bring in two more GA training aircraft, but there is nowhere to park them so they are not allowed. There is some area on the southern apron which is sometimes empty but this is more often busy / sometimes full with small jets. I understand that as a consequence all visitors have to have prior permission, to ensure that there is somewhere for them to park.
There is some grass area where it could be possible to park, but it is poor quality and has long grass. The grass is required to remain long for bird abatement (birds can’t get prey if grass is too long so the birds go elsewhere). If you go across this grass area to park you risk damage to the prop (done that). They could tarmac the area but I am guessing that the cost of doing so would not get recovered, from extra GA parking and extra landing fees.
The CEO at EGGD has been taking his PPL; I have spoken to him and I don’t think he is anti-GA.
So I think that the high landing/handling fee for visitors is a discouragement to visit due to the lack of space.
Well done, thanks!
I would like to share some good news regarding the next step following the survey – we shall be able to enter the legal action EU and national level against abusing airports!
It took bit more than initially expected, but today I got confirmation from one of the legal teams I was talking to that they will take a challenge. This will be the CHALLANGE in fact, it looks that airports under current legal regimes are well poised for doing with prices whatever they wish…
Initially I was talking with two legal companies, but unfortunately one of them, after some closer look – sadly, but gave up…
Fortunately the other option worked out, we have some real EU law/ aviation law experts there, I am more than happy the process will continue.
More details tomorrow, I need to clarify a few details regarding the disclosures through the forum, but the process starts flying 
JaconC, I agree with you, for sure there are peaks and equal distribution is some simplification here. But well, does it really matter? The all six are pretty similar in terms of size of the infrastructure, one runway, one ILS, typical regional airports. None of them is even close to be called “busy airport”. Part is attractive for CAT traffic, part not.
Looking at the survey results I made an assumption that high landing/handling fees might be a result the process, that once CAT level is high enough the airports/handlers (for whatever reasons) start pricing GA with discriminatory rates.
On the example of Poland this hypothesis looks like being true. It would be great to have it verified also from other places, like the tops of the survey list – Greece, UK, Spain, Italy…
I think the results will be similar. That in general we will see some reasonable prices with limited cheap lines traffic and GA price exclusion once the airport serves more airline clients.
Without any regulation of that area it looks like a pretty obvious strategy. Instead of improving capacity management, maybe investing extra into some infrastructure – let’s get rid of these now less needed GA clients. With CAT traffic we have enough serving just these fat ones…
One remark after a while of thinking – the comparison of “with enough CAT traffic/ without” won’t work for Greece. In Greece we have the situation almost totally controlled by Fraport, thus won’t see any market tendencies under such umbrella. Fraport in Greece is some super league for the rest of Europe…
Bart wrote:
- Even for the orange group we are far from any congestion issues, no of operations per hour is pretty modest, so capacity is not a factor here. They decide they do not need GA anymore so they increase the prices, period.
Bart, a few questions on your analysis. It is very helpful but you do need to be careful to make the right conclusions.
Is assuming equally distributed ops during 24 periods realistic? Indeed the fact the three on the left are open 24h must have significant cost implications.
Are you at risk of mixing cause and effect? Perhaps the airports CAT goes to are larger and more expensive to run hence the higher prices? The price may have nothing to do with squeezing out GA.
