Most expensive place to take an SEP ?

[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.

[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.

[DaveW]

Originally Posted by IO540

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!

Safe flights, Sam.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Originally Posted by 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.

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

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

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?