Here is a letter that was sent to the Jersey Airport Ops Director recently, cc'd to various stakeholders. It covers the topics very well IMHO.
I was away all last week when the requirement for PPR in the Jersey CTZ was announced, and luckily, upon realizing that its introduction would affect my return, I was able to obtain a PPR number through a telephone call to your ATC facility. I am afraid that I cannot accept this new requirement in any form at all, and find its introduction to be a needless imposition on relatively small part of the aviation community.
I have been flying now for fifty two years and professionally flying for fifty of those, and have been fortunate to have enjoyed both a military and commercial flying career. I have also been able to fly professionally in every continent except South America, and nowhere in all that time, have I met such petty-fogging bureaucracy such as you have managed to introduce into the Jersey CTZ. Last year, having brought the new ATC Tower to fruition together with a new Ops Block, you attempted and finally achieved your desire to do away with your ATC Assistants, but I am delighted to hear that they are now to be reinstated for a further three year term, in order to get you out of this self created mess. You may remember that I attended some meetings last year in connection with your intent to end Faxed Flight Plans, which you maintained would save £247,000 per annum by ridding us of ATC Assistants. However, I understand that the new ATC Tower and Ops Block has cost in the region of £22million, and still does not work. Your attempt to foist the NATS provided AVPEx computerised flight plan filing system on us was going to cost the GA community £57,000 per annum until it was thrown out, and your current new idea of PPR during the so-called 'busy' months is costing the GA community money by insisting on all northerly and easterly arrivals to appear in the CTZ via Carteret. Have you no idea of the cost of aviation, and its value to Jersey and our community? It now takes approximately one hour of planning to enable one to fly the short 15 minute to Dinard and return, because apart from the task of actually planning it, one has to file the flight plan, and prior to that, enter your PPR computer site, to try and make that work to spit out an alpha-numeric six figured code that one has to put in Item 18 of one's AVPEx flight plan. This brings me around to the nub of this exercise. We file a computerised flight plan through your NATS AVPEx system, which is itself a notification of flight intent. It has an ETD notated on it, so why does any aircraft now have to enter another computer system to beg for entry permission? The answer lies in the fact that the computerised ATC equipment that your masters, NATS suggested to you, their servant here in Jersey, is not fit for purpose. Its 'cousins' manufactured in Canada do apparently work, but your Norwegian manufactured version is deficient, and to deflect this glaring anomaly, you are moving the public's attention away from the obvious and demeaning the very public sector that you are here to serve. This is our home base, and we should not have to 'beg permission' to return to it every time that we go flying.
As I said in my previous paragraph, I have flown widely all my life, and nowhere have I encountered PPR except at busy events such as public air shows. It was a joy to fly north at 3,000', and south at 4,000' over the top of Los Angeles International, and not even have to talk to them. The system works and the US FAA acknowledges it. All their hugely busy airports welcome GA, and accept the varying speeds and altitudes flown as a challenge to be catered for. I have flown small light aircraft in South East Asia, Japan, the USA, Canada, Europe, and Africa, and nowhere have I met such an onerous set of rules that you have introduced. You have also done this at a time when air traffic is falling, and GA is facing even more difficulties. Every private aircraft that arrives in the Channel Isles CTZ brings revenue to the islands, yet your new PPR system is going to drive them away. Our own local GA fleet is affected worst of all, and yet this new system does not facilitate an even flow at all, it just annoys people. This system must be withdrawn at once, and the Channel Isles CTZ returned to what it once was, an efficient, safe, happy and vibrant little corner of the aviation world.
I would now like to discuss further costs that you have incurred for us here in Jersey. The new ATC facility was built under your remit, and has cost a fortune. The Tower is actually built in the wrong place because its position now restricts access to the Freight and Executive Jet area via the Juliet taxiway to aircraft no bigger than a B737-200. Is there not a master development plan for the airport, because there should be, rather than piecemeal development. The new ATC facility is not a world leader, for there are at least four units within the British Isles that use this new system of electronics strips for aircraft information. The only difference is that their systems work, and ours doesn't. I understand that you have decided to re-write all the ATC procedures here in the CTZ, a job like this would normally be done 'in house' by ATC Officers with the knowledge, but I hear that a group of consultants have been employed at a cost of £800,000 to do it for you. This is the thin end of the wedge, because once they have completed their task, all existing Channel Isles aeronautical charts will have to be re-printed, published and then bought by the local flying community, an additional cost to our pockets in this time of financial crisis. Your planned VFR routes inbound and outbound from the three airfields will add many track miles to GA's flying task here in the islands, making our flying even more expensive than it already is. Sandy, do you know that a Litre of Avgas costs approximately £1.40 now, and that your average light aircraft burns around 50 - 65 Litres per hour?
I could go on, but I will not. However, if you wish to meet me to discuss any of the items within this message then please contact me - you have my number. It is time to admit the errors and get your local flying community back onside.
Yours in anticipation