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Old 19th Jan 2005, 19:26
  #593 (permalink)  
dde0apb
 
Join Date: Feb 1999
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Now, as to the 'viability' of a flying school in Newcastle. The North East is the most deprived region of England, and therefore the average incomes are the lowest. Consequently, there is a limited demand for a flying school. Now, conversely, Newcastle Airport can be considered a 'premium' facility...it's got a long runway, good ATC, quiet airspace and it's close to the city centre. So from the market point of view, use of the airfield could be construed as attracting a 'premium' price. Ironically, some of these features make it attractive to Easyjet, who have a training allowance as part of their package at EGNT.
I beg to differ. We have the highest number of business start ups anywhere in the UK per head of population, we have the lowest housing costs anywhere in England, so a salary of £ X buys more in the North East than just about anywhere else in the UK. It's nonsense to say there's low demand for flying. There are 2 flying clubs at Teesside, 2 at Carlisle - Carlisle for goodness sake. There's no catchment area. It's my guess that a significant amount of business at Carlisle airport is done with people from the west of Newcastle who found that driving over to Carlisle was as cost and time effective as waiting at Hold 2 / F.

But GA is a cinderella in the UK compared to the US, and without a cooperative airport its damned difficult to run a decent training operation.
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