As an oldie, I find these prices astonishing. Can inflation alone have made prices change this much? I suppose compared to the price of a house, it has, but compared to wages, at least average wages, it seems to have outstripped inflation.
At Southend, there was a commercial course with Austers charged at £3.50 per hour. The landing fee was 2/6d (which is 1/8 of a pound.) and was for the LAST LANDING ONLY. We were used to help calibrate their (offset) precision radar, and mixed in with the commercial traffic as though we were part of an airline.
I just can not understand how this country expects to turn out people that would be of benefit to the nation -- if we were ever at war again for example -- when it allows the training of progressive young chaps to be crushed like this.
I spent some time trying to persuade the boss of Ipswich airport to have a no landing fees policy. I put forward a rough business plan that showed just how much profit could be made with ancillary services. He didn't really give it a hope of succeeding.
Always, the land prices in England have made business-plan analysis a bit of an exercise in futility. Ipswich for example was worth far, far more as a building plot than an airfield.