Originally Posted by
IO540
I don't understand the economics of that Gatwick policy. They could attract a lot of traffic at say £50-£80 a pop. One can understand it would be boycotted by the farm strip community (most of them regard £10 as too high, so e.g. Shoreham at £18 is a no-go) but an awful lot of more serious and foreign pilots would use it, for its very good transport links to London. It used to have a GA terminal, many years ago. I guess the management just lost interest in GA, when the £500-fee jet-market handlers presented their business proposals... They would have to drop that 24hr PPR requirement though - another classic job creation scheme.
I think that's exactly the point - Gatwick has limited slots which it wants to use for airlines which make it a lot of revenue. Also it needs for safety reasons to leave a large gap after any heavy before a light aircraft arrival so one light aircraft arrival loses them a couple of heavy aircraft arrivals.
So, the obvious solution is to price GA out, which is what they do. I don't blame them - if I want to fly that way, I'll land at Redhill!
What I don't understand is how (for example) Cranfield, which is busy but not stupidly so, behaves in a similar way - particularly when the University and numerous businesses on site would probably benefit substantially from their customers ability to fly in.
G