Mykonos LGMK - Tales of summer madness

Summer madness in Mykonos Airport, Greece.
When demand saturates an airport capacity to the point of extinction of non airline traffic.

Mykonos LGMK apron overview
Click for high. res. version.

Not an airborne picture !
From the closest hill north of the airport, Mykonos airport (and apron) in a “calm” early July day.

Another night shot from nearby location with one departure; one aircraft on approach and the main town’s glare on the right below the stars.

A short clip up from the east mountain of an EASY landing showing all the airport.

OK enough with the multimedia and lets get to the point:

Checkout this empty LGMK apron image taken a couple of weeks ago:

and the NOTAM that caused it
B0713/14 – DUE TO APRON PARKING LIMITATIONS 2HRS MAX PARKING PERIOD FOR ALL PRIVATE,AEROCLUB AND AIRTAXI FLIGHTS.
01 AUG 00:00 2014 UNTIL 30 SEP 23:59 2014.
CREATED: 31 JUL 09:35 2014

Note: The three helicopters and the Pilatus are about to leave within the next couple of hours.

This is in contrast to how it used to be until recently in July & August of previous years.

Me in 2006 parked at the far right back corner

Same story, same spot, 2013, last one at far back left (southwest) side of apron.

The story :
Local CAA had overdone it with private jets and “favors” to handlers – following pressure – by approving PPRs to almost any loyal paying “VIP” private Jet owner for a space in the apron during their vacations there.

The apron can get max 2 airlines, 3 pvt jets and 6 light GA aircraft parked “normally”.
The 2 airlines were standard 3 by long time ago, the 3 pvt jets were becoming 10+ with GA and helicopters squeezed in as well and that was opening Pandora’s box as to who would be the privileged few …

A careful game of managing apron capacity to 110% was being played all these years.
In 2014 it got even worse with Mykonos being even higher on the demand BUT the change was that key airport personnel who were managing the “squeezing in” of aircraft were mixed with colleagues on shift following an accusation for bribing in 2013 and an investigation that proved nothing …
The result was that the squeezing in was not managed any more exclusively by the “experts”.

Following this Airlines were getting more and more CTOTs (delays) due to air traffic and apron capacity.
The amount of IFR business jets coming in and out was bringing not only the apron but the airport to full capacity.

Mykonos is a single 1900m runway airport, with procedural ATC, a VORDME approach, NO taxiway and only two apron taxi links with the runway. The backtrack needed reduces considerably the airport’s capacity.

“Diving in” for the VOR DME approach exiting the MKN hold with one airliner ahead already in the procedure and one above me in the HOLD.

Airport authority gives Eurocontrol a 4 (IFR) arrivals per hour limit and some times following coordination they may rise the number to max 6 depending on the ATC in the tower and the expected departures traffic or apron capacity and/or the staff at apron managing the parking.
The apron can take maximum three B73x A3x type of aircraft and that is with segregated parking with the last one relying on the first one leaving first.

Recently charters were not getting CTOTs (delays) because they were coming from “far away” but local (Greek) Aegean Airlines (monopoly after acquiring/merging with Olympic Air), coming mainly from Athens and other Greek airports with Airbus 320 and Olympic’s Dash 8 were getting most of the delays at flights to/from Athens since they were flying “closer to home”.

Result was that foreign PAX on AEGEAN were loosing connections from Athens onwards to return home in Europe and the airline had to compensate for that all too often lately..

The drop that spilled the glass and was the tipping point was this incident on July 4th :
http://en.protothema.gr/chaos-at-the-airport-of-mykonos/
http://en.aegeanair.com/all-about-us/press-office/press-releases/press-release/?prid=478
AEGEAN’s Airbus coming in from Athens was guided by the marshaller in a hectic apron to taxi in between two other Airbus tightly parked.
Wingtips came in contact and all hell broke loose.
The boss (a considerable stakeholder in Greece) got pissed off and took it all the way to the top to the ministries to put an end to the problem of the saturated capacity at Mykonos airport.

Result: By ministerial decision in August and September no private aircraft parks in Mykonos more than 2 hrs !

B0713/14 – DUE TO APRON PARKING LIMITATIONS 2HRS MAX PARKING PERIOD FOR ALL PRIVATE,AEROCLUB AND AIRTAXI FLIGHTS.
01 AUG 00:00 2014 UNTIL 30 SEP 23:59 2014.
CREATED: 31 JUL 09:35 2014

I personally saw the safety report following the incident that was generated by the airline and submitted to the CAA.
The NOTAM (2hrs max parking) is a copy paste of the recommendation of the safety report in the conclusions section.
Officially off course the one is not linked with the other (report with the ministerial decision expressed in NOTAM).

Most pvt jets now leave the pax and continue onwards to fly for parking to Athens Intl. LGAV which actually doubles the IFR traffic by private jets !
For the big money guys this is not an issue…
For the humble GA visitor who would be able to book a space long in advance its a no go till end of September.
In essence the AIR TRAFFIC did not reduce but only the APRON TRAFFIC.

Nearest alternatives for light GA are Syros LGSO (with plenty of parking space) or Paros LGPA both within an hour’s ferry connection but this beats the whole purpose of GA and private flying at destination of choice.

Also quite a few private jet flying “customers” simply canceled the vacations or business (yes there is – you’ll be surprised how many high end DJ’s fly for one night at high profile venues with B/J) to Mykonos. The whole point of having a B/J to some is that they want to have it available H24 to “leave now” and not wait for it to come from its parking airport. That’s what they’re paying for, the availability.
Gossip: One of those DJs (Morales/Guetta can’t remember the name) put the charge of the extra flights back and forth to LGAV for parking to the venue organizer in Mykonos.

To be honest … (personally) I prefer it this way because the apron is indeed small, dangerous with distractions, apron communications are not easy with the strong blowing wind (most of the time) and in busy days it is full of mixed airliner, business jet and helicopters traffic.

The fact that there are no parking/taxi yellow lines in the apron is for a reason.
If they were to do that a capacity of, say, 12 (total) private aircraft would come down to 8 or even less.
The demand for private aircraft aircraft parking in Mykonos was tremendous.
On the other hand the scheduled (arranged since winter) traffic program for Charters and scheduled airline flights does not cater for spare capacity for private flights.
State authorities’ planning does not cater for flying private individuals (still) in this part of the globe.
Airliners bring in passenger “head counts” and this is what counts in the statistics … especially at a public airport which is “for sale” in an ongoing process for future privatization.
Its a chicken and egg issue to which discussion there is no sensible end especially when the situation is managed by low payed civil servants (CAA) dealing with Handling Agents who have high key clients needing to park in the same tiny apron with public transport aircraft.

Just for the sake of probing the situation – even though I knew I was going to go by ferry to Mykonos this year – I applied for parking on last week of April for parking for two weeks in August, the time I would be there.
The dates I got from the handling agent in their reply in April for available space to park a light private aircraft in the two weeks of August I applied for was 5 days in the first week and the last day of the second week only !
I thanked them and replied I won’t be needing the space.
Two months later, the last day of July, came the NOTAM blocking all parking there for August & September and I was not surprised.

At least now airliners do not get delays and the loyal paying air fare passengers get the service they deserve; the apron is safer but all this comes at a price for the General Aviation (in the broader term of non airline Aviation that is).
Now nobody can park at Mykonos until end of September and end of the story. :-(

For the natural question that arises “Why do they not expand the apron ?” the answer is that from north it is blocked by existing built properties the expropriation of which is near to impossible. Also as seen in the picture on the top of this post, there is a small church right by the north properties which cannot be touched. Churches cannot be demolished by law in Greece. In two major infrastructure works of the recent past, little churches were MOVED nearby by specialized contractors (by rigging them on underground rails !) at a huge cost.
The one was obstacle to a major Athens’ road expansion and the other obstacle to Athens Int’l LGAV airport western runway.
The little church in Mykonos is already inside the runway obstacle clear zone by exemption.

To the south there are other properties (less difficult to expropriate by state) but right by them there is this tiny natural habitat

A pond with ducks (that actually dries out in summer!) that cannot be touched by environmental law.

To the east there is rising and dropping terrain north & south that cannot cater for any expansion of the airport.

So back to basics and the airport now enjoys a unfamiliar calmness to the surprise of many.

Mykonos airport is the only one in Greece that faces this capacity problem for the many reasons explained above.