Most expensive place to take an SEP ?

[Genghis the Engineer]

Curious, but where (ignoring the big international airports where we don't really belong) is the most expensive place to take an SEP for the day - say something PA28/C172 sized that comes in just over 1000kg.

I've just been quoted and charged at Cranfield:

Landing fee £34.71+ VAT

Instrument Approach £17.36 + VAT

Parking per day £7.57 + VAT


Since I didn't fly an instrument approach, that comes to £49.68 for a 1-day stop, slightly more now that t'govm't has just put VAT up.

G

[Planemike]

You are OK for this year, VAT does not rise until Jan 2011.............

Planemike

[gasax]

Of course it is only in the UK that light GA aircraft 'do not belong' at international airports.

But you do have to wonder what a supposedly GA airfield like Cranfield is playing at - hoping to be turned into an industrial estate?

[Brooklands]

Genghis,

Try Farnborough at the weekend. One of Wycombe Air Centre's 172s diverted there in bad weather a few of years ago, and was initially told that the landing and nav charges ran to a few (2 - 4) hundred pounds. It was negotiated down "on appeal".

Brooklands

[fuzzy6988]

Some more expensive ones here for a C-152:

Biggin Hill

£23.00 landing
£10.50 parking

£50.00 per practice instrument approach

Cambridge

£25.00 landing
£11.00 parking

[Talkdownman]

Stansted. 25 June 2003. Cherokee 140. Landing + Handling + Nav Service Charge came to £211.50. Yes, Two Hundred and Eleven pounds fifty pence, £180 + VAT.....

[fuzzy6988]

Yes, Two Hundred and Eleven pounds fifty pence, £180 + VAT....

A complete disaster. LAX is still $20 which includes 8 hours of parking, I think.

['India-Mike]

To be honest the parking and the instrument approach look ok, the parking especially. But the landing fee is about twice what one would expect so I guess that's your most expensive bit. In the good old days the lady at Islay would engage visiting pilots in witty banter just to get them over the two hours free parking and then sting them for £3 or whatever it was in those days.

I like the MTOW-based landing fee, especially when the splits are at the tonnes. My Chipmunks are 998kg - I get very suspicious looks from fee-takers when asked MTOW and I give them that figure before they've even finished asking. There aren't many Senecas on the register either above 1999kg - I wonder why not? (Actually I know that answer). Was your landing fee MTOW-determined? What would it be for 999kg?

Apologies for thread drift - don't know of any up here as steep as that landing fee, which is around twice what I'm used to paying.

[IO540]

I paid £60 at Cranfield.

The only reason I ever go there is because IAE are the only FAA Repair Station I know of (in the south) with the kit to do the 2-yearly static test.

The most pricey must be Gatwick / Luton at around £500, most of which is the mandatory handling.

The most I ever paid was £250 or so at Tirana, Albania (LATI). £100 is common around Europe, and is OK provided one isn't going to go there again...

[Piper.Classique]

£100 is common around Europe
We must be flying in a different Europe. Got back from Poland with the Super Cub, and of the ten or so airports that we used, in France, Germany and Poland, only one cost over six euros. One was free, including the hangarage.
Ok, no instrument approaches, but in three cases we had an overnight in the hangar (the weather wasn't very nice). No-one charged us for camping on the airfield, either.
I did get a free landing at Le Bourget this year, as well, but that was the ladies' day fly-in so it probably doesn't count.

[IO540]

OK, non-customs airports are much cheaper, but that is not an option flying in/out of the UK.

[A and C]

I have to say that Biggin Hill is very good value for money, having used it a number of times I find that the opening hours are very good, they supplied a good met and Notam brief without me asking for it, the car park has 24 hour security and the ILS is free when the weather is bad enough to realy need it.

The headline cost is high....ish but when you look at the big picture and quality of service it becomes apparent that it is cheaper than a lot of the other options unless all you want is half an hours flying and a cup of tea.

[Piper.Classique]

OK, non-customs airports are much cheaper, but that is not an option flying in/out of the UK.
Well, I do that as well. Poitiers, Caen, Cherbourg, Abbeville, Beauvais, Pontoise, Calais, Troyes, to name a few, are all around the eight to ten euro mark (though it's a while since I was at Calais) and all have customs. Some notice required, by phone, except for Poitiers, Cherbourg, and Calais. Oh, and the free landing and hangarage at Thionville, where they say they have customs as well.

[IO540]

Poitiers, Caen, Cherbourg, Abbeville, Beauvais, Pontoise, Calais, Troyes

They all seem to have one thing in common though :)

All are French.

Most, maybe all, are subsidised by their local Chamber of Commerce.

I remember paying 3 euros at Biarritz, in 2003.

[fuzzy6988]

The most pricey must be Gatwick / Luton at around £500, most of which is the mandatory handling. The most I ever paid was £250 or so at Tirana, Albania (LATI).

:yuk: :yuk: :yuk: :yuk: :yuk: :yuk:. These prices are well and truly disturbing.

£100 is common around Europe, and is OK provided one isn't going to go there again...

Not for me it isn't. £100 in a C-152 is madness.

Either pilots of private/light aircraft out there are extremely wealthy and/or they are so rare in numbers that the air infrastructure planners have completely left the average joe out of the equation. What will the AOPA say?

[Deeday]

At Gatwick, during the zone-transit bonanza - courtesy of the volcanic ash - I heard a pilot asking the tower if it was possible to do a touch-and-go. Controller's reply: "I've been told that the fee is around £900". :eek:

[Piper.Classique]

All are French.

Most, maybe all, are subsidised by their local Chamber of Commerce.


Well, yes. That's because I live in France so that's where I return to. They are run by the local Chamber of Commerce, certainly (except Pontoise and Beauvais which are "Aéroports de Paris". Troyes at least turns in a handsome profit for the CoC. I could add Limoges to the list, and I daresay a few more further south.
So, Germany.... Most I paid there was at Bautzen. About 8 euros for 2km of runway, and the stuff that goes with it. Including free loan of bikes to go 3km to the town. One thing they have in common is that they aren't on the channel coast oh, no that won't be it.....Abbeville, Cherbourg, etc.) Belgium, Holland, France, Germany, Spain and Poland all seem to be able to do cheap landings for GA as long as you don't insist on joining in with the heavies. I don't know about Greece or further east than Poland. I won't pay more for a landing than the cost of the petrol to get there :confused:

[172driver]

£100 is common around Europe, and is OK provided one isn't going to go there again...

Don't know where you paid that, I certainly never have, except LXGB / Gibraltar.

You may mix in the 'approach fee' some European airports charge if flying IFR, which I understand is what you tend to do flying around Europe. VFR 100 quid is certainly NOT common.

[IO540]

Quickly from memory... (euros)

Prague 150
Corfu 80 (though this seems to have dropped to about 30 last week)
Paderborn 80
Zurich 70

So perhaps £50-£100 is a more accurate range for the bigger places with Customs, outside France and Spain which are generally a lot cheaper. I can't remember what I paid at Valencia. San Sebastian is now closed to non Schengen traffic anyway.

Here we have Norwich and Newquay at £50 and Cranfield at £60.

I think all these prices are steep for GA but they do not bother me on a one-off flight. If I fly for say 4 hours I burn nearly £300 in fuel, and the hotel won't be cheap either; I have just paid 190 euros/night at Zadar and Brussels can easily be 2x that. I don't stay in fancy places but I don't want to stay in total dumps - too old for the youth hostel type of thing :)

One would not do it if going somewhere regularly. Then you look for some VFR airfield, and file the big one as the alternate. The problem is that if you want an instrument approach, and Customs, you can be a bit limited. A lot of people stop somewhere out of the UK to get a Schengen stop but if they worked out the total cost of that stop in fuel burn etc they would probably not bother.

For Prague, Vodochody is a bit cheaper and now has Customs (PNR).

There are a lot of stories about Gatwick but last time I checked, about a year ago, it was £80 to land and about £400 for the mandatory Harrods Handling.

[gyrotyro]

Quote from IO540

"OK, non-customs airports are much cheaper, but that is not an option flying in/out of the UK."

I think that it is, as you are probable well aware !

You do not have to leave or arrive at a full customs airfield in the UK. Popham and a hundred other airfields are quite acceptable airfields to depart from or arrive at from a foreign flight.

Vote with your wings and avoid all of these overpriced airfields which suffer from delusions of adequacy !

[IO540]

Popham is in the UK, I think. Returning to the UK, one can land at a farm strip (subject to an agreement with the police etc). The issue with Customs is flying abroad, from the UK.

I agree re boycotting but that works only on the burger runs or where one is just flying aimlessly. If you want to fly to Place X then you have to fly to Place X.

[Fright Level]

Contacttower did Gatwick for £874.12 - see this thread (http://www.pprune.org/private-flying/298339-light-single-into-gatwick.html).

[IO540]

I don't understand the economics of that Gatwick policy. They could attract a lot of traffic at say £50-£80 a pop. One can understand it would be boycotted by the farm strip community (most of them regard £10 as too high, so e.g. Shoreham at £18 is a no-go) but an awful lot of more serious and foreign pilots would use it, for its very good transport links to London. It used to have a GA terminal, many years ago. I guess the management just lost interest in GA, when the £500-fee jet-market handlers presented their business proposals... They would have to drop that 24hr PPR requirement though - another classic job creation scheme.

[oversteer]

Contacttower did Gatwick for £874.12 - see this thread

He did get a £350 refund though.

[Fuji Abound]

From a few years back, not the ideal circumstances, but at least there was no charge. :)

http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz66/fujiflyer/Dec2007023.jpg

[DaveW]

Returning to the UK, one can land at a farm strip (subject to an agreement with the police etc).

Nothing to do with pricing (where my personal absolute limit is no more than the cost of an hour's Avgas), but to clarify a point: There is no requirement to gain "agreement" from the police or anyone else to land at a farm strip when returning from a European Union country. All that's required is 4 hours notice to Customs and Immigration - tell them when you'll be there - you don't require anything back from them at all, and the police have nil interest.

A special case is to/from the "Common Travel Area" (Eire, NI, IoM and the Channel Islands - hotbeds of villainy, all) when you should return to (and indeed, depart from) a designated airfield or gain explicit permission from Special Branch for your farm strip etc.

[Sam Rutherford]

Cairo and Tripoli come in at about USD1000 each...

but then, you do get the full size bus to take you to/from the terminal! :hmm:

Safe flights, Sam.

[Genghis the Engineer]

I don't understand the economics of that Gatwick policy. They could attract a lot of traffic at say £50-£80 a pop. One can understand it would be boycotted by the farm strip community (most of them regard £10 as too high, so e.g. Shoreham at £18 is a no-go) but an awful lot of more serious and foreign pilots would use it, for its very good transport links to London. It used to have a GA terminal, many years ago. I guess the management just lost interest in GA, when the £500-fee jet-market handlers presented their business proposals... They would have to drop that 24hr PPR requirement though - another classic job creation scheme.

I think that's exactly the point - Gatwick has limited slots which it wants to use for airlines which make it a lot of revenue. Also it needs for safety reasons to leave a large gap after any heavy before a light aircraft arrival so one light aircraft arrival loses them a couple of heavy aircraft arrivals.

So, the obvious solution is to price GA out, which is what they do. I don't blame them - if I want to fly that way, I'll land at Redhill!

What I don't understand is how (for example) Cranfield, which is busy but not stupidly so, behaves in a similar way - particularly when the University and numerous businesses on site would probably benefit substantially from their customers ability to fly in.

G

[IO540]

Gatwick has limited slots which it wants to use for airlines which make it a lot of revenue.

Is that really so? I fly in the area approx weekly, and it is very obvious that LGW is nowhere near fully utilised. What I think is much more likely the case on the slots shortage is that they are short of slots when the airlines want to fly, which is at certain times of the day only. I have not researched this but I bet LGW is very quiet during many periods of the day. It is very busy early am and very busy late pm when the overnight long hauls are moving. To let GA in, they would need to set up a slot purchase system (as Friedrichshafen did in 2007, in the goode olde days when the show was heavily attended) where you buy a slot for say 10 euros and pay by Paypal :) I thought that was pretty slick. But this takes a rare commodity called imagination which doesn't exist in UK airport management :)

If LGW wanted to exclude what their management might regards as "amateur pilots" they could go IFR-only, which would maintain its utility.

I'll land at Redhill!

Not a good solution for an IFR tourer
- no IAP
- grass so the plane gets covered in s*** if there has been recent rain, and dust all the rest of the time
- pothole risk (had the £20k prop strike already)
- limited opening hours

What I don't understand is how (for example) Cranfield, which is busy but not stupidly so, behaves in a similar way - particularly when the University and numerous businesses on site would probably benefit substantially from their customers ability to fly in.

That one is a mystery. I expect that in the current climate the place will hit the buffers before somebody doing the books (who probably knows nothing about aviation) discovers what game their ATC is actually playing on the radio.

[Fuji Abound]

Is that really so? I fly in the area approx weekly, and it is very obvious that LGW is nowhere near fully utilised


You can get a very good feel for the volume of traffic by looking at their arrivals and departures board (on the internet).

[Pace]

You can get a very good feel for the volume of traffic by looking at their arrivals and departures board (on the internet).

Fuji

Have been in there no more than a handful of times once at night with winds gusting to 60 kts which was fun as the heavy landing behind me nearly took out his wingtip :E

Every time though we have been speed seperated maybe 180kts reducing to 160kts and then back to VREF for landing.

A light GA trundling down the ILS at 100 KTS reducing to 80KTS would cause havoc to their flow at most times of the day.

Pace

[Intercepted]

A light GA trundling down the ILS at 100 KTS reducing to 80KTS would cause havoc to their flow at most times of the day.

What is the procedural differences between lets say Gatwick and some much larger airports in US? They can obviously deal with the situation and at the same time welcoming GA traffic without any problems.

Is it just a question of attitude?

[IO540]

Exactly...........

[fuzzy6988]

They can obviously deal with the situation and at the same time welcoming GA traffic without any problems.


I too have wondered this. There are parallels between this and all this low level Class-A airspace you'll see in various areas in Europe that you'll never see in the US.

Specifically I would be interested in the history and development of GA between the two continents.

It seems that the most fundamental building blocks for anything to do with air transport, appear to be airline centric (a clear example would be Heathrow) and then everything else being designed around it. Doesn't this ring any alarm bells?

[172driver]

What is the procedural differences between lets say Gatwick and some much larger airports in US?

From personal experience.

US: one way to do it is for ATC to ask the VFR (or light/slow IFR) traffic to fly offset. Meaning: you fly the approach, but offset by half a mile or so. Faster jet traffic flies the normal approach and overtakes you. Once close in you do a dogleg back to the normal approach, land, and get off that rwy PDQ, as most likely next jet already on final behind you.

Spain: enter traffic pattern and hold at a holding point near the approach end of rwy in use. Jet traffic passes, you get in behind and land; as above, you exit rwy asap.

No big deal in either case and you only occupy the valuable real estate both in the air and on the ground for minimal time.

Both procedures of course assume that you know what you are doing regarding wake turbulence avoidance.

[Pace]

Totally agree that they could handle light GA but really they dont want to and stop that traffic with massive landing fees.

Slotting slow traffic into the flow is possible but you only have to watch the stream of heavies trundling into Heathrow to realise that your only likely to be regarded as a poor cousin and held until there is a space.

I would also agree that the USA has always been far more GA friendly. In Europe we are regarded as a nuisance that is semi tolerated and not really wanted and of little importance in the scheme of things.

One of the busiest European airports is surprisingly Dublin. I used to take a Seneca in there a lot. around 70 Euros. Went in there recently after a break from Dublin in light twins and the charges had rocketed to nearly 250 Euros.

Dublin too have always been speed regulated "can you hold 160 kts till 3 dme" was and is the usual going in there and you hear them pulling the heavies back at those speeds for seperation.

From Liffy you get glideslope indications and can adjust the descent rate to maintain high speed all the way in so not a major problem but dont know what they would do with a Piper 4 seater other than holding you or telling you to Bu++er off to weston :ugh:

We are naturally talking about visual joins what do you do IFR and IMC into these airports in a snail Plane ??? YES and I too can remember going into Manchester or Luton for a coffee but that was then and not now.

Pace

[IO540]

Part of the problem here is the relatively minimal PPL training, resulting in pilots unable to handle anything unusual and resulting in e.g. the Southend tragedy where a student was asked to orbit, and he killed himself. Even with long-time PPLs, I can see there are ATCOs who hesitate to request an orbit in case the pilot does something stupid.

In the USA, you come out generally able to fly into these places.

But I don't think the LGW issue is really the ability to mix with heavy traffic. They have plenty of real gaps, when one could just come in and land. And the CAS around LGW is pretty tight so holding OCAS and then diving in to final would be easy.

[n5296s]

I've been into LAX a couple of times, both IFR, once in actual and once in VMC. The VMC approach was easy, they just had me fly a short approach and slotted me in between two commuters. On the IMC approach I held for about 10 minutes, I guess again until they could slot me in easily.

But Gatwick isn't LAX, it's more like San Jose (SJC). SJC has a short GA runway but a couple of times I've needed to fly the ILS into there, i.e. onto a "big" runway, and it's absolutely no big deal at all.

I think it's 90% about attitude and 10% about traffic.

n5296s

[ShyTorque]

Fixed wing pilots, think yourselves lucky!

London Heliport; latest charges:

Hughes 269 (SEP) and similar sized aircraft:
Landing: £350.
Parking to 24 hours: £616.

[fuzzy6988]

I think it's 90% about attitude and 10% about traffic.
...
In Europe we are regarded as a nuisance that is semi tolerated and not really wanted and of little importance in the scheme of things.


But why do we think people have such attitudes?

Is it culture?

The failure of GA to promote itself (through AOPA or other related organisations)?

A lack of education and awareness of GA among people?

The focus of airline-centric money making enterprise designed to shut out anything seen as non-revenue earning, such as GA?

[Mark1234]

Perhaps necessity also plays a part? My experience is of Aus, where again GA gets a 'better deal', that said, there GA is not just a rich man's toy, it has real utility. There's a lot of commercial GA, and a real need for making the 4 seat charters and the like. I suspect the US may have been the same.

Back in the UK I get the feeling that in the vast majority of cases, it's either airline ops, or a leisure activity. I know there are exceptions, but.

[Pace]

Mark

I agree with you. In the USA which is a large landmass and where cities could be 200 miles apart there has always been more of a practical need for light aircraft as a mode of travel to get from A to B.

Lawyers, Doctors, Businessmen all owned light GA right from the smallest to large business jets but for me the key words are practical means of transport.

In Europe Light GA has never filled the practical means of transport category especially in the lighter aircraft and have always been regarded as leisure aircraft.

In the USA the FAA made the IR much more achievable so that the "practical means of transport" could be just that.

Over here we still carry the banner of leisure flying for sunny days only. That is how the authorities see us and want to keep us.

With the advent of the EEC and so called elimination of individual country boundaries and ecouragement of free movement that should have changed but somehow has not within Europe.

That may have something to do with the BIG STATE attitude of our political systems in Europe and the fact that GA is still seen as a rich mans playground more than GA aircraft being a needed business tool or transport mode.

Practical means of transport is the key and other than in the higher levels of GA those words dont fit in Europe. Even in the higher levels of GA the company Jet is still seen as polluting indulgence rather than a practical wealth creating tool which was never the case in the USA.

Pace