Newcastle charges

[Hugh_Jarse]

Thought I'd just post this up. I think I'm turning into a grumpy old git, because stuff like this is really starting to irritate me these days ...

I want to go to Newcastle for a few hours, so I thought I'd fly. Straight forward VFR flight (in a SEP), land, park, taxi to the Toon, meeting, taxi back, pay the fees, take off VFR about 5 hours later. All during the day, no out of hours stuff.

No pax, no fuel, no ground services - in fact, no "services" at all, other than a little of ATCs time.

Cost for the above (ignore the taxi fares) : £71. :confused:

Contrast and compare to sooooo many places around Europe ...

I'm going to drive. I hate the A1, but I just hate having the p*** taken even more !

[worrab]

How about Currock Hill a few miles to the West. PPR and mainly gliding but they do accept some powered aircraft. (Don't know the charges though)

[wsmempson]

I know what you mean. I flew in a month ago, stayed for an hour, and flew out again. £52 (including the compulsory handling - wtf???) seemed pretty steep - but then I knew that in advance, so made sure that I arrived IFR and got a radar vectored ILS thrown in, which almost made it worthwhile.

Some of these fields simply have dellusions of grandeur, which will come back to bite them, in the long run.

[jxc]

Hi

There is a little private strip called yearby south east of newcastle


Cheers

[PPRuNeUser0173]

There is one much closer than Yearby - try Fishburn instead!!

[jxc]

Can you claim it as an expense everybody else manages too :E

[007helicopter]

Yep, grumpy old git, just pay it and enjoy the flight !!

I use Newcastle myself, the handling agents have to be paid, sorry....

[tonker]

I live 2 mile north of Fishburn and it takes 30 mins to get to Newcastle(60 in rush hour)

Taxi anyone? Currock Hill my choice.

[bingoboy]

Ah well at least you don't have to go there to watch the Premier league anymore. :hmm:

[Riverboat]

Stupid comment, 007helicopter. Just the sort to get airport management thinking that their exorbitant fees are justified.

NCL doesn't have a 2300m runway for light aircraft, but for much heavier stuff. It doesn't have an ILS or any of the grand terminal facilities for light aircraft, nor does it have 30+ air traffic controllers for light aircraft. In fact nearly ALL its costs are not relevant to light aircraft, and the least they can do is let light aircraft slot in for a reasonable charge - maybe £20, and not require them to be handled. (This assumes that they have designated a place outside the RZ for light aicrraft, such as the flying club.)

UK regional airports seem to be managed by accountants who couldn't care a damn about GA, because it doesn't earn them as much as a B737 load of passengers (car parking etc.) It is a very sad situation.

[scooter boy]

Sounds like a typical tit-for-tat starting justifying and countering the outrageously high charges for GA handling at regional airports.

My ha'penny's worth:

Personally I found Bristol's out of hours handling charge £200 extremely nauseating (we arrived at 8pm one evening last summer in a Mooney as a weather diversion). The landing fee had been waived under the Strasser scheme but the lovely people at BFC still got us with a handling fee. £200 for photocopying our passports and 7 mins on the ground - what great value! It was utterly shameful.

Handling services should never be mandatory for GA - they are a license for greedy monopoly and give carte blanche to the rip off merchants to charge whatever they feel us "wealthy" GA pilots can afford.

It is a great irony that the hugely well conceived and successful Strasser scheme is often negated by the astronomical charges for mandatory handling at many regional airports.

I never use overpriced/mandatory handling ripoff destinations like: Bristol, Newquay, Leeds Bradford, Battersea Heliport, Luton or Doncaster-Sheffield etc... unless no other practicable solution can be found for my itinerary. They do not represent value in my opinion (unless you have a clear reason for going there and not to a cheaper alternative).

Additionally (as Riverboat says) landing there validates the finance manager's decision to overpitch the price.

The airports who insist on mandatory handling have succeeded in their aim of putting me off, fortunately there are usually alternatives - especially if you fly a helicopter!

Avoiding the tyranny of landing fees and handling charges in a helo is a great feeling. Flying a helicopter from one (free uncontrolled) private site to another puts me in mind of a phrase my old grandmother used to say "there is no price better than free". (I try not to think about the cost of AVGAS, insurance, depreciation and maintenance ;))

SB

[VT10]

Try Peterlee. Closer than Fishburn and with a hard runway too. Fuel and instant access to the A19 for Newcastle, Teesside or Durham.

And Premiership football:D

[Pilot DAR]

Yeah, 71 pounds does seem off the end of the scale. The only comparison I know of in Canada would be Toronto international, whose charges for a landed and parked Cessna 150 will come up to be over $200. For any other aiport in Canada, $5 t0 $25 would be more normal, with many airports not charging at all. But...

As I spent 3 hours cutting the grass on my home runway the other day, after spending all day putting up new runway lights which I bought, I am continuously aware that it does cost money to operate even the most modest aerodrome. The notion that pilots could just drop in, avail themselves of the convenience for free, and leave the cost to someone else is a little too far on the other side.

It is our responsibility as pilots to pay a REASONABLE charge for the services and facilities that we use. 71 pounds sounds like robbery to me, but zero is not right either!

Pilot DAR

[mikehammer]

I suppose I had better suggest Eshott for a tenner landing fee. 360 radial at 14 DME from Newcastle if I recall correctly. Fuel however is not guaranteed to be available, better plan on it not being. Taxi to the toon is gonna cost you £40 each way at a guess. There is a bus down the A1 but it's probably only a little cheaper :}

[bookworm]

Don't you just hate the way the handling charge is often much more than the landing fee?!

I stopped at Lille yesterday. We were met by the handling agent who drove us to the main terminal and walked us through various locked doors to the main concourse where the restaurant is. After lunch we asked the information desk to call her, and she walked us through passport control and back on to the airside, then drove us back to the GA terminal. She got us weather info, and drove us back to the aircraft -- all 100 metres.

Landing and parking for a 1700 kg twin was EUR 4.06 + VAT. The mandatory handling fee was, as usual, the most expensive part of the bill by far, at EUR 8.50 + VAT. :)

[L'aviateur]

mikehammer, is the VOR at Newcastle working again now?

[airbourne]

Try £150 in mutil flight in LBA. Before anyone says coney park. take off and landing a R44....£60 please!!! For doing NOTHING!

[Captain Smithy]

Easy way to avoid silly landing fees, high fuel costs and mandatory handling mince is go elsewhere.

Go to a small airfield somewhere fairly nearby, take a foldaway bike with you in the back and cycle to your destination. Saves plenty £££ to spend on more flying and will keep you fit. Win win. Simples :ok:

Smithy

[Bigglesthefrog]

A few years ago I remember having dinner at some event where there were quite a few people involved in the adminstration side of airports. At that time, one airport which I will not name, but it may have been in the southwestern area of the UK, had started to see a big increase in large commercial air traffic due to the holiday trade. Before this, it had been very welcoming indeed to GA and PFA types in general and only took a modest landing fee. However, I was shocked to hear one woman, in a senior position at this airport, maybe with a tongue loosened by a bit of the free Champers, referring to the pilots of these aircraft as "Noddies" and what a pain in the **** they were. The tone of her conversation was that these sort of aircraft were not welcome at her airport as it was too big to be bothered by them and that allowing them in was not in their interests! When someone asked her how she proposed to get rid of them, she said that pricing them out would be the best way.
Some months later, I noticed that the landing fee had rocketed and pilots of light aircraft were going elsewhere.
The airport was obviously doing very nicely now on the holiday jet business, so I don't suppose they were sorry to see the small guys go.
So I think the real reason that Newcastle has such an exorbitant landing/handling fee for light aircraft is that they simply don't want them there:(

P.S. I heard many months later that the airport I have referred to actually started to suffer an increasing reduction in commercial numbers as some carriers decided to move to another location. With the sudden reduction in revenue and jobs, it seems they started to become much more friendly again with G.A. and positively started to invite them back again.
Ho Hum!