In France, I'd say that most of the airfields have no guards, no police, no custom and even no fence.
I like it that way, too. This is a wonderful place for GA.
But how long can we keep it that way? Take a look at this webcam at Saucats airfield (LFCS, near Bordeaux) where between 100 and 150 travellers invaded the premises yesterday afternoon, shutting the place down (Notam) until Thursday 20 June at least, but more likely Monday 24 June.
(Apols for thread drift Bosco...)
In Croatia no commercial operation (including training) can be performed from the airfield/airport without fence, guard and fire brigade.
I don't think a simple fence would have prevented the travellers to invade the airfield if they had wanted to : just a matter of cutting it. In France fortunately we don't have the same law as in Croatia. It would prevent most aeroclubs to perform training...
It would prevent most aeroclubs to perform training...
That's what happened here ... now the training is performed only on (international) airports. But on the other hand aeroclubs were competing FTO's which wasn't fair competition since clubs used to get government money.
GA scene in Croatia is very sad at the moment: there's no more government money, more-less no clubs, two FTO's (one is faculty and the other one operates under Slovenian authority), 11 PPL facilities (4 of them are dying clubs, one does only ground classes, one is completely grounded due to airworthiness issues, one will not ask for reissuing certificate once current becomes expired after this summer) of which only 4 are actually train people and each of these 4 owns only one Cessna 172 at least 20 years old except one (which has 2005 G1000 equipped one).
Croatia seems to be an ideal place to set up an FTO.
For example Zadar...
But even Losinj would work fine. There is an ILS just up the road at Pula.
Egnatia Aviation in Greece seems to be functioning well at LGKV despite coming across as rather disorganised.
Lufthansa flying school used to fly out of Zadar until something like 5 years ago. Don't know the reason why they left. Maybe the change in Avgas taxation that occurred a few yers ago?
I do remember paying around €0.50/litre for avgas around 2007, at LDLO.
After that it went up steeply, maybe to €1.50 within 1 year.
They weren't in the EU so there was no reason for the tax. I thought that they just decided to make some easy money!
That's what happened here ... now the training is performed only on (international) airports. But on the other hand aeroclubs were competing FTO's which wasn't fair competition since clubs used to get government money.
Were they really? Probably, like in France, they could only train PPL, no CPL. For many (most) people, getting a PPL represents a large sum of money., even at aeroclubs'rates. Better to enable people to train than prevent them from flying because they cannot afford the FTOs' prices. Moreover, large and busy international airports are not the best places to train, especially at the beginning when you fly the pattern all the time. Do you know how many pilots private pilots there are in Croatia?
Lufthansa flying school used to fly out of Zadar until something like 5 years ago. Don't know the reason why they left. Maybe the change in Avgas taxation that occurred a few yers ago?
If you run the school, Avgas costs approx 1,3€ plus VAT (which you can deduct as operating cost) while for private usage is approx 2€ (VAT 25% included).
So there was no taxation changes on Avgas for flying schools. Lufthansa left because company taxation changed - the period of tax free operation had been expired and they closed the business. They used Zadar as home base because running company in Zadar meant 0 company tax because it used to be area of special government attention - subsidized to eliminate war effects.
What kind of tax were they saving?
In the UK you have VAT (which every business can register for and claim back), you have Corporation Tax (tax on profits, which can be concentrated at tax jurisdictions where the rates are lower by the use of various devices such as transfer prices or by locating intellectual property appropriately), you have duties (which a flight training operation can claim back if it holds an AOC)...
A company also pays Employer's contributions on any wages it pays.
I would have thought that Lufthansa would not be paying any corporation tax in Croatia, because it would be trivial to arrange for their operation there to not make a profit.
