Originally Posted by
youngmic
Dexta,
At the risk of further thread drift;
I occasionally here comments from staff of Council run airports that the nominal $10 LF falls way short of covering the cost of running an airport and the Council dips into general revenue to fund the balance. They see this as the price the community pays for the benefit of having a town airport, as Mostlytossas pointed out.
But as you pointed out many are private such as Goolwa, can I ask how you do it with out compromising commercial in confidence details. I would imagine that $10/landing is not much unless the airport is particularly active which I suspect Goolwa is.
I am sorry to hear the Council charges you to provide an airport, I can understand the charge for rates, but would have thought they would more than compensate with some form of an operating budget back to you.
Does your airport get regular visitation from RFDS flights transferring local community members to Adelaide or offer fire bombing access or water facilities?
If this is something that you feel is to sensitive for a general forum I understand.
Fortunately landing fees only make up a small portion of our income, if we had to rely on landing fees alone then no-one would land here! The $10 covers aircraft 600kg and under (mostly RA-Aus) but they are the ones who complain the most. Our main rate is $14 per tonne + GST, BUT we often waive it for many reasons (like buying fuel, getting maintenance, etc). We manage by being creative with our assets, like hiring out the main runway for vehicle testing (hence why PPR is important) by the hour. Also the Airpark will provide us with security to keep the airport running for well into the future. But the council wants about $1,000,000 from us to pay for local infrastructure! This is despite the fact they will get council rates, more tourism etc etc etc. But we are nasty capitalist pigs for wanting to develop an airport and must be punished for the greater good.
We do get RFDS in here (transferring mainly from Victor Harbor) and we have water facilities and infrastructure for the CFS - but until the CEO of the council needs the RFDS or his property is on fire they do not see us as an asset but as a nuisance.