I draw that route on SkyDemon but cannot bring myself to do it! I know all the arguments but it is just not something I want to do.
Next time, fly direct across the north sea – you’ll save more than half an hour. Ok, so 40 minutes across water is boring, but you can enjoy looking at all the tankers / ferries chugging their way across……
A few weeks after visiting, one receives by surface mail to the registered address of the aeroplane a multi-page paper bill for a terminal charge (departure charge). In my case this was 9.52 Euro and cost me about £8 bank charges.
If you do this regularly, other forum members have suggested cheaper payment routes:
https://www.euroga.org/forums/flying/9697-eurocontrol-terminal-charge-for-vfr-flight
Same here. Our company will pay the train ticket and nothing else. If you travel with other means and have a nice guy in the expenses department he will re-imburse you the train ticket cost. There are others who insist you take the train for environmental reasons and will not re-imburse neither your private car nor any other means. We have to travel train up to 5 hours of travel time one way. In the past I have twice managed to turn a 5 hour train trip into a 40 minutes airplane trip and did get the ticket paid.
I have explored this with my employer. HQ is Dublin and I go there about 3-4 times per year (I am home-based near Banbury, Oxfordshire).
Their position is that they would pay what it would have cost for me to travel there by conventional means. Which when you add up the airline fare, 2x 60EUR taxis at the Dublin end, airport parking at Birmingham and my mileage to the airport, is a fair bit. Probably not quite enough to cover my flying costs completely, but it would give me some very cheap flying – something I won’t argue with. I would fly into Weston, which would still mean taxi fares but about half what it costs from Dublin itself.
The only real reasons I’ve not done it so far are my lack of instrument capability/legality in Ireland (I am IR(R) rather than IR) and the apparent difficulty with low Class A over the Irish Sea which looks like it would prevent crossing VFR at an altitude I am comfortable with – I would like 7,000-8,000ft minimum because the TB10 glides like a brick.
No need for 50/50.
It is 100% legal (in the UK at least) to charge the whole cost of a flight to one’s employer, if the flight is wholly for the business. If say you do 100hrs/year and the total cost of running the plane is 10k, and you do 10hrs for the company, you can claim back 1k. And if you have 1k’s worth of VAT receipts, the company, if VAT registered, can claim back the VAT on those, so it pays even less.
You can do the same with a car. The often quoted stuff about 45p/mile etc is just a concession from HMRC allowing you to do this without it being questioned even if the car costs 1p/mile to run.
There is a requirement that the company cannot require you to fly. You must have the option of driving, taking the train, etc. Otherwise it opens up a whole other can of worms (you need a CPL, etc, etc).
I split the flying costs 50-50 with the company. That meant that the company paid what it would have paid had I gone by train (the best public transport alternative. Flying commercial might have been slightly cheaper but no quicker and a lot less pleasant). Splitting the flying costs this way also avoids any potential for an awkward discussion with CAA or HMRC.
Joe-fbs wrote:
My employer lost neither my time nor their money from this trip
Could you tell us a bit more about this (if possible) ?
Did you pay for the flight with your money ?
Thank you everyone for the comments. Just a few responses:
Outbound, no real learning points, all was fine.
First attempt at the return trip, I departed Rotterdam more in hope than expectation but did expect to have enough visibility of storms ahead to make Midden Zeeland (or Kortrijk or Oostende or Dunkerque-Calais as the case may be). I also did not expect on turning back to find the weather so bad behind me.
Actual return trip. As already noted, probably I should have stuck to plan A and continued to Oxford rather than land at Southend but both were safe and caused no trouble to anyone and diverting to Southend meant that I did the instrument approach (SRA) fresher than I would have done. If I had been unable to land at Southend i.e. not gone visual before minimum, I did have the plates for Cambridge, Cranfield, Oxford and Gloucester to hand and two hours fuel in the tanks so lots of options.
Exhausting? Not at all. Compared with Easyjet or Eurostar, very relaxing.
My employer lost neither my time nor their money from this trip so should have no reason to change their mind if I want to fly myself again. They are an aviation business and me being an active PPL is a benefit which they get for free as part of me. In any case, I rarely travel for work and even more rarely would light GA be a good option. When I have in the past worked for people with their own helicopters and / or six-seat FIKI aeroplanes, they have been great tools for work but I am nowhere near that rich.
Wow !
Sounds like a exhausting week you spend ! Left on Monday and back to Southend on Friday !
Will your employer let you use GA again next time 
?
Just a question : are you “Eurocontrol IFR” capable ? Or did you you choose not to go this way ?
