Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
Matthew gbr,
My question was not at all meant to be disingenuous. It was actually a valid and sincere question.
But as far as what is relevant to the subject, valet parking of a car (irrespective of how much the car is worth) has absolutely nothing to do with landing a helicopter.
The point here is that a landing fee (or any other type of charge) can be expected in most circumstances. The discussion is whether or not a landing charge is reasonable for the level of service provided. As I said before, I've encountered a landing charge on a school field that was five times as much as this hotel wanted. Totally unreasonable in the view of most folk, I suspect.
Well, what's unreasonable?
Cartier sell high end watches for really high prices, is that unreasonable?
If you don't like it, you can buy a Casio.
School decides to charge a high price. You don't like it, go elsewhere. A helicopter and a landing pad are not an essential service. There are other options.
The local restaurant gets visited by Tom Hanks and decides to charge x5 to sit at the table he sat at. Is that unreasonable? Nope, just don't sit there.
Gatwick charges a large prices to land GA aircraft. How unreasonable. What an outrage, they are certainly not GA friendly! We need cheaper access to Gatwick ...
On a philosophical level, for exampel, the US is GA friendly, which is funny because they are generally a user-pays society and so the subsidising of GA costs at large airports could be argued to place a cost on all other users at large airports who can't afford to own or be involved in GA, and they should be outraged that some percentage of their airfares are going to commercial operating costs which then pay for GA.
Why should the helipad landing fees be really low and subsidised by other guests at the hotel (however small their subsidy).
Why not the school profit a bit from monied up helicopter pilots to help their coffers?
On the other hand, a local state primary school charges a high price for uniforms. That's pretty unreasonable, as education is mandatory, and the costs need to be reasonable for access to all.
Anyway, I think the real test here is to ask some non aviation people:
"My friend the Managing Director in his £300K helicopter is irate because he can't fly into a swanky manor and have a high end lunch for free, he has to pay £150 landing fee."
See what the response is ...