I hate to say this but the are reasons why Manston closed, and not all of them are due to airport management empire building (massively inflated fixed costs) and UK’s stupid transport and local planning policies.
Anyway, I bet a load of people are flying the GPS approaches there – till Jeppesen discover the place is actually gone and remove them from the database. I suppose out of date database cards will be worth quite a lot to the south east UK flying schools 
If you have a current GNSx30 or GTN card, you may want to hang onto it. I am certainly going to keep an extra KLN94 card with the IAPs on it. Plus a PDF of the Jepp plates.
So, does this mean there is (for the time being) a place to land free of charge in the relative vicinity of London, and with an IAP to boot?
The closure of Manston is unbelievable.
I hate to say this but the are reasons why Manston closed, and not all of them are due to airport management empire building (massively inflated fixed costs) and UK’s stupid transport and local planning policies.
In my view, it is defo mostly due to the “UK’s stupid transport and local planning policies”. Something is totally awry with these.
There seem to be two problems: First, it seems to be much too “easy” to convert an airport into something else. In other european countries, licensed airports are much more long-term protected by the laws and regulations. In Germany, there is something called “Betriebspflicht”, i.e. the operator is obliged to keep the airport open under all circumstances. This Betriebspflicht cannot be so easily escaped from. In Italy, the planning status of licensed “airports” (even the small ones) is essentially cast in stone. I believe that, over the last 12 years or so, the number of licensed airfields to have closed in Italy is about five (two of them in Sardinia). And even those, on the local and regional plans, ares still classed as “airports” I assume.
We all know that airports are often not the most profitable way to make use of a piece of land. They can’t be. And that is totally normal. Elsewhere, airports (even the smaller ones) are considered assets in a community’s or municipality’s that cost money to have. Period.
The other problem seems to be that airports in UK often seem to be in the hand’s of individuals or private companies, both merely maximizing profits. That – in connection with the above – is a deadly cocktail. And then always this story about “building houses instead”. Geez! Are you guys all sleeping under the bridge these days?
As long as these things don’t change, UK is going to lose more airports.
The sad thing about this is that the airports that get lost tend to be those with a high utility value for GA (attractive locations, hard runway, often IFR but still with reasonable fees…). See Sheffield, Plymouth, Filton, Manston. What’s next? Wellesbourne (Stratford-upon Avon!), Newquay (Cornish west coast), others?
So, every year a handful of new farm strips pop up while one or two “high value airports” close. The problem is that those farm strips are often in the middle of nowhere, with 500 meters of boggy grass, no fuel, no services, massive operational restrictions, etc. Up to that point I am in full agreement with Peter.
But: I am sure this stream of closing airports it has very little to do with whether John Doe with his aeroclub’s Piper Warrior flying out of White Waltham is disposed to and decides to spend 20 or 30 quid for a landing or not. That’s not primary. Many regional airports and airfields in the more under-developed areas of Germany have very little traffic. Still, they don’t usually close. (But then, these don’t usually have 50 or 100 employees… ).
There was a time after the war when the UK had hundreds of airfields. It is only all too logic that many of these had to close. Then, starting in the late 80s I guess, small GA went into slow and steady decline. Subsequently, along with the shrinking GA activity, its infrastructure shrank itself to a healty and “natural” size. However, now is different. The GA infrastructure has reached a point where big parts of the country are no longer accessible by GA if one is looking at hard surface runways (let’s not talk about instrument approaches…). The entire east of Kent is now totally devoid of such an airfield. This also applies to the triangle between Manchester, Stoke and Sheffield (a few miilion people living there, I guess?). Big parts of Dorset. Plymouth area. The Bristol area (disregarding EGDD, which is 140 pounds at least).
A point has been reached where something needs to be done; otherwise, light GA in UK will lose the last bits of what remains of its “utility”.
So, does this mean there is (for the time being) a place to land free of charge in the relative vicinity of London, and with an IAP to boot?
I am no way a lawyer, but my understanding is this:
I managed to land at RAF Coltishall after it shut, because a serving officer arranged it, but that was a one-off. The place was deserted.
I agree with all you say, boscomantico. Especially
The problem with Kent, especially that very far part of Kent, is that it is the back of beyond. About 20 years ago I was looking at some houses. You could easily drive half an hour to reach the nearest village shop (which sold coke, sweets, cakes, other crap). It has improved a bit, but property prices (50% off say the main Sussex areas) reflect the general lack of economic activity and accordingly the lack of people with the right “situation” to be flying GA.
Obviously the runway isn’t going to vaporise tomorrow, and an aeroclub could run it for decades with almost no maintenance. The UK has many ex WW2 tarmac strips which haven’t been touched since WW2 and they are still “OK”. Or, higher up the food chain, there is enough commercial property income to keep it going as an industrial estate – same as every UK airport that is actually functioning. But sadly the land value for housing is too high (even in that part of Kent!) to allow the place to fall into the hands of an aeroclub, or just to run it as a non-ATC airport for light GA up to private jets.
The other problem is that the London airports (Gatwick and Heathrow) do all the cheap flights so there was little prospect for Manston to get that market. As far as a local catchment area goes (for holidaymakers etc) it doesn’t have the population around it, anyway.
It’s true that light GA is not going to help much with the fixed costs of a megabuck airport like Manston (which probably had a fire crew big enough for an A380 crashing there) but I still find it distasteful to read the utterly depressing threads on the main UK GA chat site where certain airports get lynched just because their landing fee is say £30. But this really controls just where the “£3 all day breakfast” crowd flies to and wasn’t the problem for Manston which was just too remotely located.
A point has been reached where something needs to be done
I agree but I don’t have a clue what can be done. I went to a Dept of Transport presentation a few years ago where they identified this problem and said they will create separate policies for airports, but politicians change every ~4 years and nothing happened.
Maybe this will teach the whingers and whiners within the UK GA scene to get real and get a life and support the airports that remain – by paying a few quid more.
I would not hold my breath Peter 
I agree. UK GA runs largely on the I am allright Jack! principle. Too many of those who have been able to retreat to a farm strip are happy to the rest of the infrastructure sink.
Due to some aspect of the way UK farmland has been divided up over the decades, most plots are no bigger than about 500m. I went through this exercise a few years ago, advertising in a farming magazine. There is really very little out there. It can be done, but to do it properly you would need a bunch of people digging deep into their pockets even just to drive the Planning appeals through (100k+).
Look at GA businesses at Manston such as TG Aviation:
It would appear that even the High Court has hung them out to dry on the side?
This is extremely grave news for GA in the UK.
What aspect of the High Court judgement are you referring to James?
Well, I was based at Panshanger and there was a very professional campaigns on many levels and at different ‘angles of attack’. Some community based, some were residential based, some conservational based, some historical based, most very compelling and some cost a fair amount of money to produce from what I saw on the side-lines. Even a high-powered MP who had his plane based there was unable to at least in the interim swing it. Now in the case of Panshanger, the driver as far as I am concerned was pure financial gain by the landowners, and a lack of respect for their lineage’s heritage, the users of the airfield. But their interest is not aviation, and I don’t suppose it was really housing and the good of a garden city far from their residence off-shore, but then find me one person who isn’t interested in money ! I understand that Panshanger is in the interim unlikely to be one of the councils prime housing sites any more, at least not in this round, but then maybe I will be completely wrong about that, and maybe the landowners will one day make the money they so wish.
It seems to me that if Land Owner wants to sell + A council or someone else may benefit in the future = Absolutely no chance at all for the aviation community to win. Only some rich person with an amount of £££ or $$$ or EUR greater than the potential value of the land once rid of aviation is going to win out I think. Aviation has some fairly well of people, but to club together to buy your Panshanger, or your Blackpool, or your Manston etc is one tall order.
Sad, but as you say – Grave.
Presumably the Manston / TG situation was concerning the rights of a leaseholder when the landlord goes “bust” – examples.
Basically, the leaseholder is buggered. He has rights under the lease but they cannot be usefully enforced. He cannot generally get his hands on the freehold of the land; if he could do that (following the freeholder’s bankrupcy) then no freeholder would ever grant anybody a lease.
And a leaseholder whose privileges have been shafted (for whatever reason) can’t sue for more than his economic loss. Also he has a duty to mitigate (minimise) that loss. So given that TG moved to Lydd and carried on there, apparently adequately, meant their economic loss was small to nonexistent. And had they not moved, they would not have been mitigating their loss (e.g. if I crash my plane into your roof, you can sue me for £X to fix the roof and hotel costs, etc, but you cannot sue for £X plus £Y where £Y is water damage, because you are expected to cover the damaged house up in a timely manner so rain can’t get in and cause new damage).
I think that, Manston apart, the most common scenario in the UK is that of an airfield on privately owned land. The landowner may be keen on aviation but eventually he/she dies and the surviving family member(s) is usually
So, if I was setting up airfield from nothing, I would arrange for the ownership to be held in a trust comprising of multiple aviation enthusiasts, so the death of one doesn’t terminate the whole thing and screw everybody based there.
BTW I am still convinced that it is possible to set up a full GA airfield from nothing, with a full planning permission. There are two problems
The starting cost would be about 100k to get the planning application through.
But not in Manston or anywhere else in Kent. There isn’t a sufficient concentration of wealth and the transport links are mostly horrid and driving from A to B takes hours.
