Peter wrote:
Oban is nice – for a day or two.
Yes, anything over two days without proper immunisation (yellow fever vaccinations), and a robust private health care plan would certainly be pushing it
The first time I went to Oban we arrived 15 minutes after closing and were threatened with a MOR – which they kindly dropped so that was a lesson learnt
Peter_Mundy wrote:
were threatened with a MOR
One of many, many MOR tales.. The seaplane operator was one of the best being MOR’D at every opportunity, in fact every time he landed in the water next to the airfield. Highly amusing. there are countless threads on Oban and its operation. Stuff of legends…..beautiful place though
There was a lot of politics at Oban, where the local council tried to oust the former operator and eventually succeeded, limiting him to running the avgas concession. That’s my vague recollection from some locals’ description. He is still there – a nice guy, always happy to help. It certainly used up a lot of web server bandwidth on a couple of UK aviation chat sites a decade ago – for those with lots of time
Looking up far north on the map I found two airfields, Westray and Papa Westray, not planing to go there but they seem so close to share the same circuit but not the same ground?
What kind of a threat is a MOR for something utterly trivial, like arriving a few minutes late? I can’t imagine the AAIB starting an investigation or writing a report on a late arrival or a planned water landing by a float plane.
alioth wrote:
What kind of a threat is a MOR for something utterly trivial
While a late arrival maybe safe, it seems to me the opening times listed in the AIP/Notams have enough “legal binding” to spoil the day…
Forte amount of MORs, the guy doing collection/analysis will have to do lot of filtering/judgement, as a joke from one ATC MOR’ed his vacuum cleaner when the latter makes too much noise
But a few minutes (in this case 15) can easily be run up with a few deviations for weather or headwinds on a GA flight. A GA airfield should expect the odd delayed arrival and it seems to be blowing it utterly out of proportion to threaten a MOR over it.
The reality however is that you cannot land at most GA airfields after closing time, short of declaring a mayday and just “using the runway”.
Somebody got a €500 fine at Megara in Greece. I once enquired what it would be at Shoreham and was told it would be £1000; this was during the years when the indemnity option (which makes the effective opening hours for based owners more vague, depending on PNR) was not available. It may have been based on 1hr of overtime for everybody (ATC and fire crew).
Lots of people divert due to this.
And Oban, like most tiny airports in tiny places in and around the UK, is rather anal. They require the yellow jacket for the ~30m walk to the terminal. Same on Alderney (population ~1800 of which about 1790 work at the airport checking passports). But Oban will lend you a yellow jacket if you need to get to your plane
Peter wrote:
The reality however is that you cannot land at most GA airfields after closing time, short of declaring a mayday and just “using the runway”
Which to be honest is silly.
Out of all the annoyances in European GA (or perhaps more specifically, UK GA) isn’t EASA, the CAA, regulations etc. It’s crap airfield opening hours and the complete unwillingness to let people just use the runway when the office closes for the evening. This problem is 100 times bigger than anything EASA have ever done. It hurts everything from training to touring. Most people can’t do PPL training on a weekday for instance, because the airfield keeps bankers hours and is closed before anyone gets out of work (despite usable daylight till 10pm in the summer).
If it’s a nice day and on Friday, I decide I want to go somewhere on a whim after work, my choices are pretty much limited to Ronaldsway, Blackpool and Prestwick, they are the only places I can reach in the British Isles on a Friday evening before they close! (If it wasn’t for the even sillier CTA GAR nonsense, I suppose I could also manage Glenswinton or Kirkbride or Castle Kennedy, as not being ‘corporate’ you can go there SR-SS). If we have to plan and book stuff days in advance it negates one of the worthwhile features of GA (to be able to go places on a whim) and you may as well just use easyjet.
