Oh what a lot of regulation you want to introduce for a very small market.
For governments and airport owners it would be much cheaper to simply close and turn the airfield into a housing or industrial estate.
One has to ask why some of these places have an airport in the first place. After all the majority of International air travel in Europe is vested in a small number of large airports.
Making every airport even small ones, infrastructure and then addingba lot of new regulation would force many of them to close. Some might be downgraded to on GA movements. Dinard has been mentioned here. But the amount of GA alone cannot keep an airport open without funding from towns, regions, or the state. Border force and customs officers cost money. Who pays? And why would they want to do that?
I think we need to be careful what we wish for.
Unfortunately more regulation won’t solve the problem. Subsidising these airports from EU, countries or local governments actually created the problem. Because of being funded by authorities they developed “I don’t care” behaviour model and they really don’t care whether GA traffic will use “their” airport or not, forgetting that the airport itself or a good part of it was financed by someone else. If e.g. LDZD looses Ryanair they will be subsidised by authorities because the ownership structure is Croatian State 55%, County of Zadar 20%, City of Zadar 20%, te Municipality of Zemunik Donji 5%. They will simply jump in to save the jobs.
gallois wrote:
Oh what a lot of regulation you want to introduce for a very small market.
I am not a lawyer and there could be people much better suited to word this stuff out. My intention would definitly not be to go after small airports, but after those larger ones which price out GA totally needlessly, who try to kill off the whole GA by imposing PPR, parking restrictions and fees which have no justification.
This is NOT about places who DO their job as infrastructure, this is about those who REFUSE to do it. Le Bourget, Zurich, Munich, Berlin, the Greek Fraport mafia, Croatian airports who without any alternative decide to price out GA. This is whom I am after.
Small airports should not be targeted as they do fulfill all those things. Their fees are not above €30 for airfields without infrastructure and very few ask more than €50 who have immigration and customs. They have GA parking spaces, in fact they have nothing else. They don’t most of the time have PPR for and most of them want to have people come, so they do not have a problem with any of this.
This is about large international airports who at the same time are in a monopoly position because there is no small airfield around serving the same city and who claim they do not have space for 20 GA places, they are too busy to accomodate the odd GA plane and who otherwise wish us all go to hell.
I am sure someone a bit more skilled in formulating this kind of rulemaking can formulate it in a way this is reflected.
All I am saying is, the current situation, where practically ALL larger airports are trying to divest themselves of the responsibility to cater for ALL aviation is unacceptable and will eventually cause GA to become restricted to grass fields and UL’s. Therefore, the only way to stop this kind of abuse of power is to regulate the large airports into submission while fortifying the position of smaller airfields.
With this kind of Infrastructure policy, smaller airports would profit from money larger airports have to pay to get rid of GA, which they then can use to make their own infrastructure so that they become full blown replacements. IMHO it would do the opposite of what you suggest, it would cement the role of these 2ndary airports rather than turn them into housing estates.
If we just sit here and boohoo about how small we are, we are going to loose every single airport which has any significance for travelling. Not in 10 years, but in the next 2-3. If places like Croatia become no-go due to outpricing, then who will be next? Or rather, who’s left now?
And just btw: The only reason I did not loose my homebase to outpricing more than 20 years ago WAS regulation or rather the fact that the Swiss CAA did see the same way: They refused to let them rise the landing fees to a point where GA could no longer afford them, for years. They did the same in Samedan to the best of their capability. But that is the problem: Their legal capability did not reach so far as to stop all of the abuse, only landing and some other fees, not the rest. Hence, airport authorities invented handling and so on.
It is my clear opinion that the only way this monopolist abuse can be stopped effectively and GA guaranteed a place on those airfields would be an infrastructure based European regulation.
But where do you draw the line? Luton was a good GA airfield when I started flying and not expensive. Would a government or the EU have been able to stop the exclusion of GA.
How about Northolt. Great for London but the only people who afford it are the likes of the Duke of Westminster.
Then at what price is OK? And who sets it?
Should and could an airfield like Nice be regulated when there is a reasonably pticed GA field not far away.
Some on here are unhappy to park on grass but how much more would they be prepared to pay for hard standing.
The larger the airport the more they are restricted by health and safety. It starts with the uellow jackets, then webhave refuelling policies eg fire trucks on standby, or at least extinguishers. And what about people wandering from the plane to the gate or the terminal?
La Rochelle does this by painted lines on the floor. That came in not long ago and itbhad to be paid for. Fortunately in France for the moment painted lines are not yet hugely expensive, but many here were worried ar first because a week before the was a bit on the news about the cost of IIRC 50yards of bus lane in London costing £500,000.
The EU can not make policy for airports or any other business to lose money.
The only way to stop any profiteering is to stop using the facilities. It is what the ULM scene is doing. Schengen and the EU have helped us to not need customs or immigration airfields within the Union. We can’t always fly where we want. We are ( if you don’t include business jets which most of us have less in common with than we do with ULMs or experimentals such as Vans) a leisure activity. Most of us fly for fun. We fly because we like it. As a means of transport there much cheaper and perhaps easier ways. Unless of course we are going to a place where there is no expensive airport which doesn’t really want GA there anway. All you have to do is to read the great trip reports euroga this year.. They have been great and have not been AFAICT reliant on being ripped off by airports that don’t want us or price us out.
What about acting through orgs like AOPA to boycott the airfield? In that case some very desirable traffic would also stop going to the airfields in question and might influence the situation.
Europe has few if any functioning AOPAs.
gallois wrote:
We fly because we like it. As a means of transport there much cheaper and perhaps easier ways.
I very firmly disagree.
I admit, I do like to fly, and I do fly myself out of pleasure to fly and/or out of taste for the challenge even if another way of transport would be more convenient, but there are myriads of scenarios where flying oneself is very much quicker, more convenient, or even the only possibility. Here’s a very partial list from my experience.
I’m not even getting into the “free to choose your own schedule” advantage of GA.
Note that my list contains all kinds of destinations: “small places in the middle of nowhere”, middle-sized towns, and major cities.
gallois wrote:
But where do you draw the line?
The main idea of any infrastructure plan is to draw the line where parts of public infrastructure becomes inaccessible to a large part of the community due to monopolist behaviour.
gallois wrote:
Luton was a good GA airfield when I started flying and not expensive. Would a government or the EU have been able to stop the exclusion of GA.
How about Northolt. Great for London but the only people who afford it are the likes of the Duke of Westminster.
IMHO a rule along the lines of what I proposed would do exactly that. It would stop places like Luton to be able to price out GA in the way they did, provided that there are no other airports available offering similar services which are accessible. In the Situation such as London, it could lead to one or two airports (one in the North and one in the South) would become dedicated airports for GA, which then would take away the obligation to accomodate GA from e.g. LHR and LGW. Luton might be a good one and there is Biggin now.
But looking at the situation in places like the Croatian airports which have started to outprice GA? Or even more balant the Greek ones, which literally have no alternative?
gallois wrote:
Then at what price is OK? And who sets it?
A pricing which does not qualify as outpricing yet more or less reflects the service rendered has to be determined either by the competent authority or by the EC. I am not advocating free use of this infrastructure and my 5/50 Euro proposal is but a shot from the hip, but pricing has to be capped someplace where It is not prohibitive to people who are in the need of airports like that, in particular IFR, Night, AoE on a regular basis.
Additionally I would add a regulation which waives or caps airport fees in case of diversion as a safety measure. Nobody should be driven away from a safe runway in range out of fear of exploitive landing and parking fees.
gallois wrote:
Should and could an airfield like Nice be regulated when there is a reasonably pticed GA field not far away.
No. If there are reasonably priced alternatives, then there is no reason to do that. However, if you e.g. have to land in Nice because Cannes goes below minima or is blocked because of an incident, Nice should not be allowed to exploit anyone who has to land there.
gallois wrote:
The only way to stop any profiteering is to stop using the facilities.
Which of course is exactly what they want. It is not the profiteering which is the problem per se, it is the prices set to DRIVE AWAY people. Outpricing is not an honest way to actually make a living, outpricing means “I don’t want your business”.
gallois wrote:
Most of us fly for fun. We fly because we like it. As a means of transport there much cheaper and perhaps easier ways. Unless of course we are going to a place where there is no expensive airport which doesn’t really want GA there anway.
One does not preclude the other. Claiming that we should simply bow out where we are not wanted will pretty much mean that places like Spain, Croatia, Greece are off the list for GA and the list is growing, that is what this thread clearly marks. And if you see trip reports like from Dan and Peter regularly, most of this stuff is not doable anymore if all the larger airports simply outprice GA. Clearly, in France, Germany and places like that, there are enough small airfields but in many places there are none.
The very idea to say that “we don’t go where we are not wanted” means a hands down win for the airport lobbies who wish to eradicate GA from their infrastructure. With the same right we could put motorway charges so high that only commercial vehicles can use them. Would that be something anyone here is willing to accept?
@Lionel how many airports in the list you gave as being more covenient to fly yourself have exhorbitant fees or mandatory handling? PPR or PNR costs nothing just a few minutes of your time so perhaps we should leave that part of the suggested regulation aside. If we are to be equal opportunity with CAT traffic that would have to be included as they usually have some sort of contract with an airfield and with handlers so they don’t have to do it every flight.
