It is true: few in the system , other than a couple of CYA authority personnel like the mandatory handling concept.
Especially in today’s low-traffic environment, unfortunately, a lot of Spanish airports have to arrange their personnel to travel to the airport ad-hoc to attend to a single light GA handling service they don’t want to do and whose price does not cover a minimal fraction of the expense.
This is a bigger problem waiting to happen and in my opinion we must not force the situation and look after the relationship.
I typically negotiate with one of the handling agents “obliged” to provide the 7EUR service and agree an intermediate amount of twice or three times the min fee, so at least they find some minimal commercial justification in providing the service. I thereby mitigate some of the associated tension, and eliminate any feeling of abuse on the part of the GA operator.
As I said before, is business for anybody. But, Aena signs contract with two or three of them in each airport, for a big package of services, most of this services they can provide makes them win money, the part of General Aviation is a price Handling Agents have to pay to be AENAs contracted. My recommendation, and is also recommendation of AOPA-Spain and Real Aeroclub de España, is to ask for the service for the price below maximum. Even if the employees have to come to the airport ad-hoc to provide us the service. For a company as Iberia, there is no difference in asking for 7€ or 21€, or even 100€. They are dimensioned to provide services above 500€. If for the contracted agents becomes a problem to provide service, they will tell Aena, and we will reach the solution: separated access to general aviation ramps, no need of handling agents.
Don’t forget that handling agents signed the contract that makes them responsible of providing good service to general aviation at the price of 9’16€ maximum, and they continue signing every year, I don’t think giving a lift in a car or van for 100 or 200 meters is going to ruin any of this agents. Also don’t forget that not providing this service properly or doing it above maximum price it can turn into thousands of € penalty by Aena, is also written in the contracts.
Happy weekend.
Here is a report on the topic. @terbang and I are just back from the Canaries (trip report to follow), and we had some interesting handling experiences. Before I describe what we went through in Tenerife Norte (GCXO) and Sevilla (LEZL), some general remarks:
Here are the reports on the places we landed.
LEZL
In January, Sevilla changed the AIP to require mandatory handling for any flight arriving from outside Spain, so we asked the 2 commercial agents for „Servicio de acompañamiento en plataforma“, as they are obliged to provide this service at a max. cost of 9,16€+tax.
WFS was the only commercial agent who offered to work with us.
Aviapartner did not reply to the request – instead, I got an offer from the GA handling agent I had not contacted myself: Andalucia Air Services asked 190,55€ for handling this type of aircraft.
WFS, however, confirmed they would deliver the service. After several inquiries about the cost, the offer was 265,13€ + tax.
With the help of AOPA Spain (AOPA Spain – Handling), we managed to make AENA aware of this and ask WFS to correct the tariff. Lots of conversations happened behind the scenes, until WFS came back with an apology and a new offer: 100€ for everything, including fuel coordination, interaction with police (because of Covid) and other authorities, general declaration and transport. As we wanted to keep the time on the ground short, we accepted this offer. We sent them a prepared GenDec and answered all administrative questions (which type of fuel, taxation data (Spain is keen on VAT numbers), etc.).
When we landed at LEZL 10 minutes behind ETA, they were there and the fuel truck shortly after. They asked us what we needed, and told us police did not need anything. We asked for a toilet and to be accompanied for the payment of the airport fees. All went well, we paid 100€ and after one hour we were ready again. So for us, the price felt a bit too much, but still we got what we wanted. Although it was strange that they could somehow clarify the police stuff without us being there…nobody asked for the negative PCR test either…
GCXO
Handling is mandatory here, and the AIP lists 5 handling agents without showing which ones are commercial (ie bound to the max tariff) and which ones are GA handlers (free pricing). Based on the recommendation of AOPA Spain, we checked with Groundforce and Iberia.
The first reply came from the handling company GERARDO MELÉNDEZ, which I had not contacted at all. It seems to be a practice to forward such requests to the GA (non commercial) handling agents who are not obliged to provide the service for max. 9€.
Groundforce also confirmed they would provide the service, with the quote: „servicio de acompañamiento en plataforma sería de EUR 65,11 por transporte“. I informed AOPA Spain and they complained for me at AENA.
A few hours later, I got a new quote: „Disculpen pero al pasar la tarifa ha habido un error mecanográfico…la tarifa correcta es de EUR 15,11 por transporte.“ A typo? OK… 😊
We would have accepted, as there is not much more to go towards 9,16€, but the AENA contact person complained again and even put me on blind copy.
The idea is to fight through this a couple of times to stop them trying out how much they can get and just stick to the contract.
Then, I got another email where the agent apologized again and the price came down to 3,66€!
„La tarifa correcta para un Microbus para categorías 4A-4B-4C es de EUR 3,66 … no los EUR 15,11 informados que corresponden a un servicio de crew transport normal.
Por favor, tomen nota que la tarifa correcta a aplicar es de EUR 3,66 por transporte.“
And this was what we finally paid at GCXO. We asked for the AVGAS truck with the tower, and it came after a few minutes.
On departure, things did not go as smoothly, but this was not due to the handling, in contrary! The guy who did the 3,66€ transport was really nice and tried to help us when they did not want to let us pass through security, complaining they didn‘t know anything about us (FPL filed via autorouter, airport fees paid online, countless mails with CEOPS, but they expected a special piece of paper which we did not have). After 15 minutes and many (parallel) phone calls the Groundforce guy could take us to the plane.
Other stops in Spain
LEBA and LESO do not require handling in all cases (exemptions see AIP), so we didn‘t have to fight this battle there. LEBA can be recommended as fuel stop, as you can walk over to the office and toilet and AVGAS is available.
(LESO would not be used as fuel stop in normal cases with France being that close and much cheaper.)
Hillarious! 
What I didn’t undertstand: was the 100€ in LEZL inclusive or exclusive of the landing/parking fees? If the latter, how much and how did you pay these?
Great info. How do you get in-flight weather information on leg between Spain and Tenerife? Did you consider Jerez LEJR as a fuel stop?
What I didn’t undertstand: was the 100€ in LEZL inclusive or exclusive of the landing/parking fees? If the latter, how much and how did you pay these?
This was only the handling. The AENA fees for landing etc summed up to 25,74€.
We asked WFS to accompany us to the AENA office for payment (could have done it via TPV online as well).
Emir wrote:
How do you get in-flight weather information on leg between Spain and Tenerife?
We are happy Golze customers Of course, this means just satellite IR and METAR south of mainland Spain.
Did you consider Jerez LEJR as a fuel stop?
Yes, however, handling is mandatory in LEJR as well. We’ve been there a couple of years ago and waited for ever for the fuel truck to arrive so we opted for LEZL this time. In hindsight LEBA is the best option and we should have chosen this AD on the way south too.
Red tape in Spain is bloody ridiculous in general aviation. Particularly regarding security to enter airside at controlled airports.
I was once held at a security gate in LEZL Sevilla during my PPL solo QXC flights because they insisted on seeing my licence. As a student I obviously didn’t have a licence, I tried to explain I was flying on my instructor’s licence. Phone calls to operations, the tower, the school etc. After a while they finally let me through. It was getting dark also so I was fearing I’d had to stay there stuck for the night and that my QXC flight would be invalidated (because some say it has to be all completed within one day).
The exorbitant handling prices they charge on general aviation… I suspect they keep doing that because the majority of people who fly international SEP/MEP to/from Spain are rich guys who don’t care (or at least don’t question it) whether they pay 30 or 300 EUR for the handling and these companies get away with it.
XPainflyer, thank you for the insight here. I’m glad that things are changing, leaving us with more options to go to! I will read through the information you provided thoroughly before flying to Spain next time. Hopefully will be in a month, depending on the COVID situation.
Udo
dkbe wrote:
GCXO
It would be great to copy-paste few facts from this trip to https://airports.euroga.org since we don’t have anything there from Tenerife region.
