Alternates - PPR and opening hours

[douglas.lindsay]

What's the expectation from airfield owners who are lucky enough to be planned alternates? If you turn up one day, having been unable to land at your intended destination, without PPR - will they likely be miffed? How about if you turn up when they're not even open?

I do my flying from Prestwick, and sometimes go for a sortie around 7am so I can best fit around work and family life. But all the decent alternates are closed at that time (GLW being a little on the pricey side and Bute being somewhat remote), hence the question.

Thoughts?

[IO540]

It's a bit of a grey area, both legally and practically.

Many pilots file an airport as an alternate which needs PPR, or PNR/Customs, without obtaining the PPR/PNR.

Within the UK it doesn't really matter (unless you pick LGW which being 24hrs PPR might get "interesting", short of declaring a mayday) but in some places abroad one needs to be more careful.

The bottom line is that if you arrive at your filed alternate, and they refuse a landing, then you really do have a 100% legitimate Mayday situation, which means they must allow the landing.

[xrayalpha]

You are always welcome at Strathaven!

Seriously, the airfield is always available - no operating hours restrictions and usually someone around if it is flyable. We do have a full-time school here and we do residential courses so there is often someone in the caravan even early hours!

Unlike Bute, you don't need a ferry home.

Next year we should also have a courtesy car and be building an airfield manager's house, so there will be 24/7 occupancy.

But back to main point:

Why not contact your alternate. After all, they might be able to give you some useful info. Then you won't need to worry about PPR etc. They'll half know who you are.

Obviously, if flight safety is a concen, you can land anywhere - ie Cumbernauld before it opens or even Thornhill - even though their planning doesn't allow flights before 9am, to use local examples.

Just don't make a habit of it, or people will question your flight planning abilities ;-)

[golfbananajam]

PPR

At Leicester our PPR can be done over the radio, even outside licensed hours you might get a response. I guess this might be true for a lot of other places too

[chevvron]

Some airfields have strict movement limits hence by landing without PPR you may 'annoy' them; with other airfields, a local planning condition may require the airfield operator to enforce PPR.
If you land in emergency eg deteriorating weather, you should get away with it, but it is best to observe PPR requirements.
Having said that, the point I made about max movements may apply. I know of an airfield which can only accept a certain number of movements at weekends; one sunday a military radar unit tried to handover a bizjet which wished to div in, not liking the weather conditions at his intended destination; although he'd nominated this airfield as an alternate on his flight plan, he'd not got PPR so he was refused landing permission (by the airport authority not by ATC) as his movement would have taken the airfield over the planned limit.(they'd aready granted PPR up to the limit)
Look in the AIP (not Pooleys/AFE/Bottlang) to see what it says about PPR; I know that for instance Farnborough are very strict (due to local planning controls); their AIP entry says you mustn't nominate Farnborough as alternate on your flight plan unless you have PPR; this may apply to other airfields too.

[soaringhigh650]

I don't understand this PPR/PNR thing.

Why can't people just arrive whenever they like and land on it?

If an airport is having capacity issues, just build a new runway?

[IO540]

I would think that almost any airfield would be virtually dead in any "bad" weather, so a lack of PPR to exercise the filed alternate option should not be an issue.

I don't understand this PPR/PNR thing.
Why can't people just arrive whenever they like and land on it?

Because that's the way it is. America doesn't use PPR. It's a largely European / 3rd World thing, tied up with job creation, etc.

If an airport is having capacity issues, just build a new runway?

Very tricky planning-wise. But very very very few GA-accessible airfields have anything remotely resembling capacity issues.

[douglas.lindsay]

Thanks all, points I'll bear in mind. I'll start calling up my alternates I think.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Originally Posted by soaringhigh650

I don't understand this PPR/PNR thing.

Why can't people just arrive whenever they like and land on it?

If an airport is having capacity issues, just build a new runway?

It's a British thing - a small crowded island, where people often live close to the airport and don't like the noise. So, airfields have lots of "no-overfly" limits, movement limits, maximum operating hours, and mandatory PPR is usually so that the operator can confirm that you've been briefed on what to-do/not-to-do, although it's also good practice in case there's an aerobatic display, or they're grazing sheep on the runway that week, or there's an annual wartime memorial service on the airfield - 1001 potential reasons can crop up.

It really isn't as bad as it probably sounds, it usually goes like this:

"Hi, my names John Smith, and I'd like to fly in around 3pm today"
"That's fine, please just check the airfield guide and take care not to fly over any local villages, what's your registration"
"G-ABCD"
"Look forward to seeing you, we'll put the kettle on".

However I've certainly been spared major embarrassement and potential safety hazard by phoning an airfield and being told they had an aerobatic display on so I'd best arrive by a particular route and within a particular timeslot (why they didn't NOTAM it, I've no idea, but with knowledge gained on the phone, it was a non-problem).

Total runway capacity is seldom the issue, it's almost always about local planning or operational restrictions.

But yes, things are more restrictive in the UK than the USA - but nowhere near as bad as it may seem from a distance.

G

[IO540]

Of course but I was talking about public airports.

You cannot fly into private places i.e. most/all U.S. air parks. That would be obvious.

The issue in Europe is that many public airports are PPR and not for any apparent operational reason.

[SkyHawk-N]

The difference between US publicly accessible airports and UK ones is that US ones are mainly state/federal owned and most UK ones are privately owned.

[IO540]

I was thinking not of just the UK but Europe as a whole. I think most European airports are publicly owned. How you define "publicly" will of course vary.

The UK is rather odd in many ways, with even ATC being privatised and as a result subject to all kinds of weird practices, like invoicing an airport for an approach radar service.

But none of this supports the case for PPR at so many places.

Customs PNR is more acceptable because one might not expect the Customs people (which, let's be frank, and as Croatia shows so clearly, is just one policeman) to be present during the full opening hours of the place.

[Jan Olieslagers]

The issue in Europe is that many public airports are PPR and not for any apparent operational reason.

As a matter of vocabulary, an airport requiring prior permission is not classified as "public" but rather as "restricted". In German it is "Verkehrslandeplatz" versus "Sonderlandeplatz".
Both France and Germany have quite a lot of really public airfields, where one can just fly in like that. In my own Belgian country only the government-operated airports are public, recreational fields are all PPR with a possible exception for some ultralight-only fields in the South.

[soaringhigh650]

Yah, I was talking about public airports as well.

as a result subject to all kinds of weird practices, like invoicing an airport for an approach radar service.

So what other weird practices are there?