Landing at Larger Airports in a SEP

[dom462]

I'm a low hours pilot and to gain experience I'm looking to land at a larger airport in a SEP.

Does anyone have any recomendations for larger airports that are cheap to land and challenging, even ones that will allow touch and gos to avoid handling fees.

[Gertrude the Wombat]

On a joyride from Jandakot the instructor asked me if I wanted to do a touch-and-go at Perth International. I got the impression (a) that he was serious and (b) that he wouldn't have suggested it if it had been expensive.

[Kolibear]

The words 'larger airports' and 'cheap' do not sit easily together, nor does 'avoid handling fees' .

By 'larger airports' do you mean busier airports, or airports with huge runways and no traffic? ISTR someone taking a PA-28 into Gatwick recently, it was quite painless, only cost about £800.

Its probably more challenging to get into a small airport with a high volume of traffic than a large airport with low numbers of traffic.

[Them thar hills]

Dom
I wouldn't get too steamed up about the "big airport" idea.
You'd be better off having a trip around some more interesting small airfields, and you'd learn a lot more and spend less on landing fees etc..
Having said that Leeds are very user-friendly and I believe Multiflight are worth a phone call to check on handling etc. Landing at Leeds is hardly challenging, but there are plenty of local airfields that are.
Get it out of your system and get on with some fun flying !
tth

[Ultranomad]

Luxembourg Findel (ELLX) is a full-fledged international airport with a 4000 m runway. Their daytime landing fee up to 2 tons is €6.10, though training flights are only allowed for locally based aircraft. Parking is €1.25 per ton per 24 hours.

[XL319]

Leeds - be careful you'll spend 30 mins waiting to land and if your not taking fuel they will charge a handling fee.
DTV - GA friendly but charge handling circa £30-40
Newcastle - Likewise (£25 landing fee, £10 parking per night plus £15 handling)

IMO go to scotland
Dundee only charge £9.00 and they offer air traffic services (no handling)

or

Carlisle (no handling) £11.00 with air traffic during the week
Blackpool same as above

[Hugh_Jarse]

Leeds (Multiflight) will charge you about £80 for handling I seem to recall, and the airport itself will hit you with a £40 "minimum charge" for landing. :eek:

As an alternative, why not use that £120ish on fuel, and get yourself over to somewhere like Ostend on a nice day. Big airport, lots of heavy stuff to mix with, but very straigh forward and very reasonable fees IIRC ...

A lot more fun than shooting 25 miles up the road !

HJ

[BackPacker]

Now that we're talking mainland Europe anyway....

Try and get a transit west to east or vice versa through the Schiphol CTR. This will give you the experience minus the landing and the landing fee.

The routing Zandvoort-Hoofddorp-overhead the main tower-overhead the center of 04/22-Victor is generally available as it doesn't conflict with other traffic. And arguably gives you more experience in dealing with very large airports than just flying up to Victor and landing on 04/22.

[Shunter]

Leeds - be careful you'll spend 30 mins waiting to landOh YAWN.

Usually people who say stuff like that have never been to Leeds. You'll get the occasional instance where the odd orbit might be required to counter for wake turbulance from a jet, but if you avoid the rush hour it's rare. More frequent is the "G-XX, keep it tight you're number 1" at which point you get to firewall everything, divebomb at the runway, drop the anchors at 200ft and do a nice little landing to zip off at the high speed exit (FKA Runway 27). My favourite type of approach.

Yes, there's a handling fee. Yes, the landing will be over £20. Yes, there's a very good cafe, extensive executive facilities and flight planning available in the rather luxurious crew room. Personally I'd rather spend my day hopping around a load of small grass strips, but if you want to go there, call and get a price then make your own decision.

[Fuji Abound]

Go to America for a couple weeks flying holiday ... .. ..

.. .. .. fill your boots. :)

[englishal]

Yes go to the USA. YOu can land at LAX for $20 which may get waived if you take on fuel or are just visiting for 10mins. Touch and go though....not likely, but you never know, if you go there at 01:00 they might allow it ;)

[soay]

Blackpool's not far from where you are. It's got full ATC, 3 runways, and a few Jet2.com flights a day. Their charges are documented here (http://www.blackpoolinternational.com/assets/pdfs/fees-charges.pdf). PPR is necessary due to limited parking, but handling fees can probably be avoided by asking one of the flying schools (eg. Westair on 01253 404925) if you can park outside their hangar.

[wsmempson]

Coventry? Landing fee in the Arrow was £16.

Southend? £22

Both Gave a radar vectored ILS as part of the service,

I last went to Newcastle in July and, including the compulsory handling, it cost £55, which I reckon is having the arse out of it. Having said that, I knew what the charge was going to be before I went, so my decision; I simply wouldn't choose to go back...

[IO540]

The words 'larger airports' and 'cheap' do not sit easily together

Maybe not in the UK but currently I am sitting at Split which is a big place but costs only about 20 Euros to land, and long term parking is 4 euros per 24hrs - far less than parking on grass at certain UK dumps I know of.

The big-airport cost situation is highly variable, ranging from a few quid/euros (not in the UK though), to £500 at say Gatwick which is a blatent mick-take.

However, flying to big airports is not the awesome experience some may think. The hardest thing is finding one's way around. One needs to read the airport map carefully and keep track of where one is. It is normal to get lost and one has to ask for taxi instructions. Even airliners get lost (plenty of jokes on that topic :) ).

[dublinpilot]

If you want to build some experience by going to larger airports, then I don't think touch and goes will add much to it. The landing part is far easier at big airports then small ones, because....well....the runway is so much bigger.

What is different is :

1) Having to be more precise about how you are getting there. Ie being able to interact well with ATC, understand their instructions, and follow them. NB. know where the reporting points are, and how to get to them.

But this is no different really than flying through controlled airspace. You'll gain nothing in terms of experience here by landing, over and above what you would gain by simply transiting the airspace.

2) What is different about larger airports, is what happens on the ground. There are lots more taxiways, and you will be told explicity which ones you are to taxi via, and where you must stop if no further instructions are received. This involves having the taxiway diagram, and being able to read it and follow the instructions.

Also, after landing and before take off, you will have to talk to a ground controller instead of the Tower. No rocket science about this....just need to know who you need to call first, and who you are 'expecting' to call next.

Finally, before starting up to leave the airport, you may have to call a 'clearance delivery' frequency before contacting the ground frequency. For VFR flights, they generally do little more than find your flight plan, give you a sqwak code, and let you know what your departure route is likely to be (which will often be changed by the tower anyway).

All of the items in 2, would be missed out by doing just touch and goes.

Having said that, most of the airports that like to think of themselves as big, aren't actually busy enough to bother with ground controllers and clearance deliverys, in which case, they aren't much different to the smaller ones.

dp

[liam548]

Where did you get your ppl. I did mine at sherburn and the QXC took me to East Mids and Humberside plus I had another flight to Humberside solo.

Very enjoyable flights but nothing taxing really, like some have said it was actually easier as you can probably take off and land 3 times on the runways they are that long :)

[Slopey]

There's not much there, but we had an excellent service from Durham Tees Valley at the weekend when we over-nighted. Reasonable landing fee (around £15 I think), and parking for 24 hours was about £6.

Mandatory handling was £10 from Midwest Executive, but for that, the nice lady came and got us in the van, took us to/from the hotel, got us a preferred rate at said hotel, pointed out the best places for food, and had the metars and tafs for our route north printed out in the bus on pick up the next day (all the met for the east coast from there to aberdeen - superb!).

Uber efficient and very friendly - very impressed! Will definately stop there again if I need an overnight on the East coast. Much cheaper than Humberside/Newcastle.

[tdbristol]

You could try Gloucester EGBJ. It is not really larger, but is almost always quite busy with circuit traffic and people doing instrument practice, plus 3 runways (makes you work out circuit) and longer taxiing. A bit more of a challenge than a single runway airfield and free landing voucher this month.

[Arclite01]

Finningley International if you are in Huddersfield ??

Arc

[JOE-FBS]

Not sure if it meets your requiremnt but Oxford (sorry, London Oxford) is a proper commercial airport although no scheduled traffic (I tell a lie, one a week in the summer, I think) and not too expensive. I did some T&G there in a PA28 recently for less than a tenner each. That's a weekend rate, it's more expensive Monday to Friday.

Gloucester already mentioned is big and busy for a GA pilot but very do-able, it was of the points on my QXC earlier this year.

[magpienja]

Maybe worth checking out Liverpool EGGP, I seem to remember they are not mega mega expensive.

Nick.

[dr.boff]

Good idea of yours, though it's not always a particularly plesant thing to do.

'Larger' airports are, by definition of their size, easy to find and land at. The problem always comes when you are down and have to find your way around. It's not that easy in any aircraft, but in small SEPs it's particularly challenging because you're not sitting high enough to see where the taxiways lead. Even with an airfield map (which obviously is an absolute must), I still struggle when I land somewhere big unfamiliar and I've had my licence for over 20 years.

In fact, it's the only thing I ever worry about, and is usually by far the most stressful phase of any trip.

I'm sure most of us feel the same, don't we?

[RTN11]

If you're looking for a big airport with more runway than you could possibly use, Exeter or Manston are around £20 to land.

Manston also has a free spitfire and hurricane museum, with a nice cafe for tea and cake.

[Pace]

Maybe not in the UK but currently I am sitting at Split which is a big place but costs only about 20 Euros to land, and long term parking is 4 euros per 24hrs - far less than parking on grass at certain UK dumps I know of.

10540

What are you doing there :) Lovely place which I diverted into flying to Cyprus in a Citation (We lost the heating :) If you want a good hotel PM me the owner put us up in a great one :)
Stop at LJLJ in Slovenia my favourite airport in Europe

As to the owner of the question why do you want a big airport? Do you want to practice identifying taxiways and markings? It cannot be the complex mass of Sids and Stars with a basic PPL.
Maybe its the ambience of mixing in with large jets taxiing around you?
Maybe you just want to be confident with commercial RT?

What do you want from your trip in a small single into a large airport?

Pace

[XL319]

Shunter....
I am ACTUALLY speaking from experience. I would never return to Leeds for the reasons stated. I took fuel on in order to avoid the handling fee, but landing fee was £25 which is quite steep for a C152:ugh::{ and I waited 20 mins to get in after orbitting at the end of Rwy 14 and this was at 7.00pm on an evening.

[Hugh_Jarse]

Shunter,

Oh YAWN.

Usually people who say stuff like that have never been to Leeds. You'll get the occasional instance where the odd orbit might be required to counter for wake turbulance from a jet, but if you avoid the rush hour it's rare.
Wind yer neck in, matey. I kept a SEP at LBA for several years until relatively recently, and I know exactly whereof XL319 speaks. I have orbited at the end of downwind on VFR approaches because of "IFR traffic on the ILS" more times than I can remember, when frankly I could have been down, parked and half way through my second pint before said SleezyJet had even stumbled across the localizer ... and don't even get me started on the amount of fuel burnt sitting at the hold waiting to line up ...:ugh:

Back to the OP, as someone said, why not try Liverpool, much cheaper and a far more entertaining arrival/departure usually.

[I love twins]

To counter that, i've sat at the hold burning 10kg of fuel a minute waiting on some puddle jumper make his approach and landing. I've also been sat on the runway waiting to go while some plonker flies straight through the control zone, talking to noone, across our departure route.

As someone mentioned earlier, don't go near any of these places if you are not comfortable with your RT. Study the charts beforehand to familiarise yourself with VRPs etc

If you are competent when you check in with APP/Radar then they'll give you a good service. If you bumble around and just readback ROGER to everything ATC transmit they probably won't even let you enter the zone.

My tuppence, go to Edinburgh :)

[Big Pistons Forever]

I have not done any GA flying in Europe but in Canada you see light aircraft in Vancouver International quite often. It is no big deal and well within the capabilities of a PPL. The big thing is flying into big airports usually means operating with big airplanes flown by professionals. ATC won't be very forgiving if you are not sure of the procedures and stumble on the radio. Do you homework and make sure you understand all the VFR arrival procedures and VRP's. Ideally talk to a commercial pilot that operates regularly out of the airport to pick up on the "localisms".

My experiences going into Vancouver is I think typical of major airports. ATC ruthlessly triages light aircraft on the intial call up. Give a nice crisp intial call with all the right info and away you go. Stumple and mumble and it will be " ATC is not accepting VFR traffic in the control zone, remain clear"

[keen_aviator]

Prestwick is not a bad choice. Quite a few airlines, as well as the RAF use it for training, not to mention Ryanair and freight operators. It is not particularly busy, last time i flew there, the only other traffic was a Ryanair 737 taxiing for departure. If you contact the Flight Centre, the landing fee is pretty reasonable (somewhere between £10 and £20 if memory serves). Also, the longer runway is 2,987M, which is quite different to what i usually experience!