Decline of flying club scene
Hi Guys,
I think India Mike was perhaps referring to the flying scene in the UK, but perhaps did not think to limit his written comments accordingly.
As a description of the UK scene, I think his comments are pretty accurate. The UK has, I believe, the second most expensive flying certainly in Europe (After Denmark) and in the world we must surely feature at least within the top ten percentile.
Add to this the gradual loss of aerodromes reducing the number of places you can fly to. These are gradually being barred to us either by commercialisation, which involves landing fees and swingeing compulsory 'handling charges' for handling we don't need, or by building development. Let's look at a small few examples.
The delightful aerodrome that used to be Halfpenny Green is now 'Wolverhampton International Airport' (or some such). Barton Aerodrome is now 'Manchester City Airport'. The long established clubs that used to operate there were just shuffled off the premises. The aerodrome at Lee on Solent fell into the grasp of Hampshire Police, who operated just one aeroplane there but wanted to use part of it as a police dog training establishment. The private flyers were given two weeks to vacate. After a prolonged battle, the aerodrome was saved, but not before the kerfuffle had killed off Carill Aviation, a very long established and well regarded flying establishment. Booker has come under pressure recently because a rugby club wanted it to build a stadium on. Redhill too was recently a target because someone wanted it for a riding establishment. And this sort of thing has been going on for years and years; anybody remember Wolverhampton Fordhouses Aerodrome?
Add to this the new hazard - windfarms! AOPA is currently fighting an epic battle againse more and more of these.
There is probably not a single aerodrome in the Uk that has not recently been, or is currently being, the target for developers of one sort or another. These people have big money and political influence, and by comparison flying clubs are very small hitters and have few friends because we annoy the noise nimbys and flying is regarded as a sport for the rich, privilaged few.
Flying always has been a minority activity, mainly because of cost, but since we have been part of Europe, things have got steadily worse. Apart from France and Germany, most states of the EU have little or no private flying and their representatives sent to Brussels have very little understanding of it. The result is we are now having to fight off massive, massive, massive over-regulation from a largely ignorant, incompetent and uncaring European government structure.
These are not the only reasons why our flying clubs still operate aircraft built in the seventies and eighties, but they certainly have made things a whole lot worse. I won't even go into why there are no British 'Group A' light aircraft in current manufacture. That could take a lot more writing and I haven't the time.
Regards,
BP.