Leeds Bradford serves nice mug of tea

[jayemm]

I flew up to Leeds Bradford this morning and got a very pleasant surprise.

Very friendly ATC, and a new facility specifically for GA south of the airfield (run by 'Multiflight'). Nigel did the marshalling, the bowser turned up as I shut-down and the PA28 was refuelled within minutes of engine-off. Nigel then walked me to a very smart lounge where I was also immediately refuelled with the offer of tea or coffee. Comfy chairs and telly passed the time whilst waiting for my passenger.

On a previous visit the compulsory handling was by a company in the main terminal at a very high cost and lots of unnecessary officialdom.

Thanks Leeds for an impressive new facility and service the way it should be.

I hope that Leeds succeeds with its policy of accomodating GA rather than edging it out as seems to be happening at other airports.

[DRJAD]

This is interesting, do you mind if I ask what the fees were?

Might well be interested in using it for passenger pickup in future.

[javelin]

This must have been in Leeds, Guatemala surely ! Friendly Air Traffic - Pah ! A bunch of nere do wells and stroppy maam's. Wouldn't go there if I was on fire :E

[md 600 driver]

i totally disagree
leeds atc have always been ok to me
multiflight are doing a stirling jpob down there i even had free landing to collect fuel

now stanstead thats another place altogether

to every body
wheres your worst atc [or the best and why
steve

[dublinpilot]

Javelin,

According to your post on another thread, your aircraft has only once seen tarmac in two years, and that landing fee was £10.

Now I don't know anything about Leeds, but I doubt that it is a grass strip or has a £10 landing fee.

So why are you so negative about Leeds?

Someone had something positive to say about them. It's good to see fields making an effort for GA.

If you actually have some some experience of Leeds to go on, and it is negative, then please tell us.

But don't just knock it, without giving a reason, especially if you haven't actually been there recently!

dp

[jayemm]

DRJAD

The fees were £15 Handling, £20 Landing (ex vat) with over 50 litres of fuel. Getting a parking space in London for a few hours can cost more than this!

Javelin

You ought to contribute to the "Whinging Gits" thread. Someone was bound to respond to my post in the way you did. Very predictable.

Let's face it, there just seem to be some pilots who have bad experiences and many who have good ones.

I have always received a very good and friendly service from Leeds ATC and I have no problem with paying a decent fee if the service warrants it. I don't like it when you are charged a considerable fee and the service doesn't warrant it.

Many airports are edging GA out altogether, which reduces our options considerably and will ultimately push our costs up further.

I hope that the initiative at Leeds succeeds and that GA pilots help it happen.

[long final]

But, including VAT, it was nearly £40 to land a PA28 and have a coffee.

I have nothing against Leeds but I wouldn't call that GA friendly

Just my opinion.

LF

[WorkingHard]

I have not been into LBA for some time so cannot comment on "friendliness" or otherwise of ATC. It is my general experience that ATC at very nearly every UK airport is absolutely first class and exactly what one would expect. £40.00 for landing and parking is probably about the cost of 20 minutes in the air so it not excessive. You may not like it so dont go there. Ultimately, where will you go for your fuel/maintenance/day out etc. Fewer and fewer users will inevitable see the demise of fuel facilities,demise of dedicated areas and an unwillingness to accomodate GA. Dont forget also these places exist to make a profit in this country, they are not a community funded amenity.

[long final]

Each to their own I suppose, but still a hot topic considering the numerous comments made on other threads. Regarding the money, you could say also that £40 is an hour in a syndicate AC just as well as 20 minutes in a rental. Does that change anything?

I think the cost issue derives from perceived value. A reason, without bad mouthing the Airport, I never visit Newcastle now unless I really need to. Having read the above post I would steer clear of LBA for the same reason. I just don’t see £40 for a pick up and fuel up as GA friendly. A good earner and good business if you attract lots of willing punters, but poor judgment if it turns your intended market away.

LF

[DRJAD]

Thanks Jayemm, I had thought fees were higher,, though had no real evidence, just rumour.

I'll certainly put LBA on my list of possible pickup/set down points for friends and relatives.

[md 600 driver]

sorry i forgot to add mine was a helicopter thats possible why it was free
but netherless cleared special branch /customs free and good service to boot
dublin was from memory 13 landing 54 handling in uk pounds

[Genghis the Engineer]

Interesting thread.

Not been to Leeds personally, but had a very similarly friendly, professional - and expensive - service at Newcastle when I made a night stop there last year on a business trip in a light single. (And the tea and biscuits, probably the only thing I got for nothing, were excellent).

It raises an interesting subject - is it sensible of the senior management at big, but usually friendly and convenient airports like Southampton or Newcastle to be apparently trying to freeze out lighter GA from their operations? My opinion is that, properly controlled this sort of GA traffic only enhances the airport facility, brings business to the area and airport, and very few such sites are really so busy that they can't cope with a few dozen (or hundred) GA movements a day. My impression at Newcastle was that the people I dealt with "on the ground" were very happy to have me there, but that somewhere above them was a senior team disinterested in any traffic with less than 20 seats - and that had a lot to do with the £53 which was landing, one nights parking, and mandatory ground handling - half that would be more normal most places, and a quarter at an equivalent US international airport such as, for example, Palm Springs.

Let's be fair and say that a few places - such as LHR - are so busy with commercial traffic that GA has no place. Equally it is not unreasonable to ban students from an airport carrying much airlin traffic. But why ban (Southampton) or price-out (Newcastle) GA when there's no particularly obvious reason for doing so?

G

[2Donkeys]

Leeds always was very reasonable for parking on the South Side, going back quite a few years ago when Yorkshire Light Aircraft ruled the roost.

Co-inciding with the change of ownership, the position seemed to become rather more muddled, and some significant handling charge hikes occurred.

More recently, callers were told that handling was no longer available on that side (especially for larger aircraft) and you were redirected to Execair. Execair obviously have a business to run, but their charge scales for light aircraft are dramatically out of all proportion to any service they provide. This is true at all of the many locations they are based.

Leeds with handling on the North Side by Execair remains legalised Extortion. I am delighted that things appear to be back to normal at Multiflight, and another option now exists.

2D

[jayemm]

But, including VAT, it was nearly £40 to land a PA28 and have a coffee. I have nothing against Leeds but I wouldn't call that GA friendly

I don't agree with long final's assertion that because the fees are £40 they are not "GA friendly". Leeds are very GA friendly in my opinion because they have invested in ways of accommodating GA into the function of the airport where others have not.

Southampton's decision to ban GA as Genghis said (I didn't realise that they'd banned GA outright) is a sign of things to come, a complete NIMBY approach and very shortsighted (ie. encourage and train pilots somewhere else; we'll only take the professionals and the big boys).

The fee of £40 covers a lot more than just landing a PA28 and a having a coffee. Amongst other things, it includes security (which means your aircraft won't be at risk of vandals smashing up your pride and joy), accident facilities and convenience.

2 years ago on landing at Bristol late-afternoon on a public holiday, my nose-wheel tyre burst; the staff at Bristol were superb. They closed the runway, got the big yellow fire-engines out, made sure that we and the plane were ok, helped get me off the runway and straight to a hangar. Despite being a public holiday, they got an engineer and I was away first thing next morning; they were extremely friendly and supportive (I felt very embarrassed) and the only charge I got was the Engineer's which I expected and which was reasonable. Had I experienced the same problem at an airfield without these facilities I would have been there for days, and the costs would have been higher.

Many GA pilots want to get to particular locations to pick up passengers for example. In the case of Leeds, flying to Sherburn would have taken more time and cost a good deal more than the £40 in taxi fares.

Ultimately market forces dictate what GA pilots value and spend their hard-earned cash on. But we should all appreciate that we want different and varied levels of service and value different types of service. What we mustn't do is continue to moan about paying a little extra to keep our airfields running.

If we don't support those who are trying to accommodate GA, then more examples like Southampton will happen, and costs will continue to increase.

[Fujiflyer]

I visited LBA last year (June) - I was very pleased with the service from ATC (as someone else said, UK ATC is almost without exception of very high quality). Multiflight were a pleasure to deal with. The only negative was that handling + landing fee cost me about £65 (not including parking which was about another £20 for 4 days).

I can accept a "reasonable" fee based on an airports facilities and as a few others say when you're paying a few hundred £ for a typical trip its easy to "lose" £20 - £30 on a landing fee. I do feel though that much more than that is unreasonable.

I try not to compare the UK situation with that of other countries. I think its fairly apparent that certain other nations are much more GA friendly (most, maybe???) but while I chose to live here I have to accept the situation (or at least not simply whinge about it and do nothing constructive).

On a lighter note - last year (and the year before) I flew into and parked for a week at Menorca (LEMH) airport. The total cost came to about 22 EUR. :D

FujiF

[javelin]

Please - Read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page - Really !

:E

[Fujiflyer]

>Please - Read the disclaimer at the bottom of the page - Really !

sorry... ???

[javelin]

As these are anonymous forums the origins of the contributions may be opposite to what may be apparent. In fact the press may use it, or the unscrupulous, to elicit certain reactions.,

[jayemm]

Javelin,

Sorry, I still don't understand your point:confused:

Fujiflyer

I take your point, but just wonder how much the total cost to fly in, say, Spain really is. It's probably not representative to take the landing and parking fees alone as an indicator of how cheap it is to fly everywhere else. I agree that it's great to go to France and Spain and experience really good service for just a few euros. But someone somewhere must be paying for it; or is flying handled by volunteers in mainland Europe?;)

[Datcon]

I guess Jayemm must be a lot richer than most private pilots if he thinks £15 is a reasonable price for a nice mug of tea, with or without Vat.
£20 landing fee at an airport which has been trying for years to be thought of as a busy international airport is fair enough but the "handling" fee is just a rip-off. Multiflight is owned by one of the richest men in the country. Well done to him. He's self made and got fantastic business acumen but I don't think the handling charges are anything to be joyful about. And I don't think a total of £41 to land a PA28 and have a mug of tea is great however nice the tea was.
It's all very well to say £20 here and £15 there isn't much compared with the overall cost of fying but it's paying for all these little extras that push the cost of GA through the roof in rip-off Britain.

[javelin]

Datcon,

Here, Here !

Or should it be Hear, Hear

Only know how to push buttons mate, can't spell as well :\

[Fujiflyer]

jayemm,

Fair enough, I guess the real bone of contention is down to the economic model which is applied elsewhere (ie in Europe). I’ve wondered the same myself (who’s really paying the costs) but I think, at the end of the day that our costs in the UK end up higher because the EU model is orientated towards investing in an airport facility rather than simply “stinging” those using it,

Best Rgds

Fuji

[Aim Far]

I went into Leeds yesterday. ATC was excellent, coping with my chronic position reporting and complete inability to spot the airport and a citation. Lesson to self - get a GPS or do the instrument approach.

Multiflight had me fuelled, watered, special branched and on my way within 15 minutes which is what I wanted. Their coffee is as good as their tea.

Sure, it would be nice if they did it all for free but we've got to be realistic here. Your £40 covers them being there when you want them. I went into Edinburgh the other week and got charged a lot more than that but the point was I could (and did) land there late in the evening so I was paying for convenience. Same for Leeds - they had the special branch capability and I needed that.

Even the FBOs in the USA don't really do it for free. If Multiflight put 50p on a gallon of fuel, we'd complain about their fuel prices. At least this way, the charges are vaguely transparent.