Remotely controlled airport towers

It’s also partly addressing a “risk” where action can be identified and taken, whether useful or not, compared to situations where no solution(s) are (yet) known.

To set a few things right, the obligation for Flugleiter in Germany is not exactly a requirement imposed by the federal Luftämter. Instead flying without some “official” on the airfield is not wanted by many operators of private as well as town/county owned airfields. So you can´t really blame any rightist or leftist governments or some such. Reason behind is most likely the tower staff is cashing all landing fees and fuel sales. More importantly opening times get limited and controlled by Flugleiter. Germany is simply too populated to accept early, late and night landings on smaller airfields. You´d get a lot of protests from neighbours and you do not want to have this when you like to have the airfield operative for some future times. I guess, Switzerland is not better in this respect ??? Already lots of airfields were closed here and in UK, USA as well, be it for different reasons. Your people would not be very happy to have “noise” from aircraft very early in the morning or later at night, when enjoying their barbecue in the garden, when being aware that they may finance the airfield with their taxes for the pleasure of a few aviators only and minimal benefit to the local community. So you just accept somewhat limited conditions that go with it and adjust yourself. At least the PPR nuisance is rarely found here compared to other countries including UK, mostly only in small private airstrips here. In my country when you do the initial call to the place and get no replies you better not land there. Sure, the Flugleiter may have been to the loo, but there may be another reason for not receiving anything. So I´d go to another place instead to avoid harsh wording after unauthorised landing. As to flying without Flugleiter, on our airfield, somewhat IFR rated, I understand, the locals may apply for early or late after hours operations, by sending a form found in my link, the third PDF, accepting conditions when no Flugleiter is present. The sky divers company on the place does late landings in summer regularly without Flugleiter so this may show that airfields could definitely accept these procedures – but it is their business to let that happen. Just don´t blame pilots or governments for regulations that depend more on conditions specific to the individual airfields. You cannot look at very densely populated countries and compare with USA, maybe France too and wish for same liberties. Vic

http://www.flugplatz-eggenfelden.de/index.php/flugplatz-edme/download-formulare

I can’t resist…

“Densely populated” is kind of a myth. I’ve done my IFR training at Wings Field KLOM next to Philadelphia and done circling approaches during bad weather flying at 800’ over expensive looking houses in the pattern area of the field. I doubt the area is less populated than many places in Germany.

The whole topic is purely cultural. I know. I’ve been born and raised there and moved to elsewhere.

Here is another example. Cordoba LEBA in Spain. It’s a state-run airport (AENA) with opening hours and no AFISO – it’s A/A and works very well with nobody on the radio. Unfortunately the opening hours are pretty bad. It’s only open in the morning until Spanish lunch time.

I guess there is no connection between Flugleiter and opening hours or other things.

Also many German airfields have the possibility to take off or land outside the opening hours, sometimes for a fee.

It’s not like that in Norway, and as far as I know, the regulations we have are more or less straight from ICAO

One thing is regulations. Another is company operations manuals. Lots of air taxi, charters etc require the tower to be manned and a minimum emergency service even in France. So sometimes you will drive at an airlort and expect the tower to be closed only to find it open because some commercial operator requested it.

Even in Norway the short field network requires someone manning the AFIS for some operations

Stephan_Schwab wrote:

Unfortunately the opening hours are pretty bad. It’s only open in the morning until Spanish lunch time.

Wow, that’s a real bummer. Flew there a lot when I lived in Spain. Used to be SR-SS, IIRC. Sad…..

The Flugleiter in Germany, in case someone is interested, is a residual out of Germany’s darker ages, issued in the 1930ies to make it difficult or even impossible to leave the German territory without notifying the authorities. As a “federal law” / Reichsgesetz it was issued by then Reichsminister der Luftfahrt, Herman Goring. In principle, it a) prohibited to take off or land outside official airfields, b) established a Luftaufsichtswache (guard personnel) and c) made it obligatory to get a take-off or landing clearance by this personnel prior to departure.

This wasn’t the case before – throughout the 1920ies, i.e., my great-grand cousin and one of the first pilot women, Marga von Etzdorf took of and landed wherever she wanted, scouted air routes for the early Luft Hansa, and flew from Berlin to Tokyo in a Junkers 50 in 11 days. These early, quite audacious pilots used a field and landet against the wind. No Flugleiter. She frequently touched down on a field of my mother’s home in Brandenburg. After the war, these laws prohibiting landing or takeoff i.e. from a private lawns without an “Aussenlandegenehmigung” by the local Luftaufsicht (authority) have never been reversed and therefore are still in place.

So, today, all sorts of excuses are made up to retrospectively justify the DUTY to have a Flugleiter. While I completely agree with what_next when he says it is a good feeling to have a fire truck nearby in case of an accident, I as well think that the Flugleiter, in many cases gives pilots the feeling they don’t have to communicate properly. And when I hear this pseudo-ATC like behaviour in some of them, I tend to agree. Some of them are great, and some of them are just awful.

So, the question for me is, shouldn’t it be left to the licensed airplane or helicopter pilot and the owner of a large lawn, airfield, or little airport to determine when, how, and under what circumstances he / she should be allowed to land ?

Two anecdotes:
1. I was in Sweden with my family, in Oeland, some years ago. The hotel had a large lawn. Suddenly, 10 helicopters (R22s and R44s) landed. It was a group from Germany, on a tour through Europe. They told me that literally only Germany has these restrictive laws.
2. My cousin, who lives in England, had a neihbour, with a large lawn. One day, I was sitting on his terrace, a couple of aircraft engines started up. I had a look. My cousin said, this is a veteran from the airforce, the guys are his buddies, they had a good chat over the day and now they’re heading home. One after the other, mostly historic plane, took off into the blue sky.

That’s what private flying is all about, isn’t it ?

So, whoever wants a Flugleiter, should be able to request one and most airfields will continue to have one. But those of us, who don’t necessarily insist on one, shouldn’t be prohibited from flying to an airfield even if nobody is there. And there are all sorts of workaround available.

My tiny experience with Flugleiters is not a good one. The bloke barely spoke English, barely spoke to me, and kept using the last two letters of my registration only. On top of it he addressed me in German, or so I thought.

After having landed it turned out there was another traffic in the pattern which has the same last two letters in its registration as I.

Useless.

The approach chart will say if there is German or German/English communication (D/E)