Shoreham - A rip off
 

I was flying out of Shoreham last week and was charged a £30 circuit charge plus £17.50 landing fee all for a 28 day check. Is Shoreham the biggest rip off in GA in the UK?

I was flying out of Shoreham last week and was charged a £30 circuit charge plus £17.50 landing fee all for a 28 day check. Is Shoreham the biggest rip off in GA in the UK?

If you fly to some unkept dump calling itself an airfield, pick up a few stones in your prop while taxiing, causing damage which (accumulated) costs 3 or 4 digits on the next prop overhaul, would that be called a rip-off?

I am not sticking up for Shoreham in particular but that is the choice we face in GA.

Shoreham is in very good condition, well maintained, and has excellent and most helpful and courteous ATC.

If you taxi into a pothole and smash the prop and have to have the engine stripped (say £15k-£20k) that's not so good either. I know renters don't need to worry about that but it does eventually translate into higher costs which have to be passed on.

Of course many will say a 400m grass strip is all they need, which is OK for the appropriate aircraft types, running mogas.

I was in a helicopter

IO540
 

Some AVGAS burners are happy with 400m of grass! The DR400 and C182 spring to mind.

Sympathy Al.

There does seem to be a general "helicopter tax" in this country - sort of, think of a number and double it. Sits side-by-side with the "multi-tax" and the "turbine tax".

Must confess I don't see any difference in the services and facilities required :ugh:

Maybe, in a helicopter, not flying to an airport is the answer.

If everybody had a helicopter, we would not need airports.

I flew into Shoreham earlier in the year and was delighted (in a really small minded way) to see that my aircraft was shown on the arrival board in the waiting area. I didn't remember what the landing fee was, so it shows you how easily pleased I am.
I did hear that Shorehams owners were in the throes of going under - any truth to this?

What's this circuit charge for? I've never heard of an airport charging for the use of the airspace. Landing, sure. T&G, obviously. Missed approach, okay I can live with that. ATC/Eurocontrol en-route charges for IFR flights, fine. But a circuit charge? Is there a legal basis for that?

I checked the VFR flight guide and it only mentiones a 16.50 UKP landing fee (for up to 1.5 MT), nothing else.

Is it me or did I see a Parking Meter there recently? :confused:

Did you have to? Now we will all see them!:eek:

"Maybe, in a helicopter, not flying to an airport is the answer."

IO540 - you are spot on with this.:ok:
90% of my (helicopter) landing fees are ..er... free because I use private sites rather than airports.

The best parts of keeping your heli @ home are no hangarage charge, bowsered fuel and the convenience of going from your back yard to someone elses or to an airport only if you really must.

Unfortunately most heli maitenance shops are at airports (with the exception of Rotorspan @ Droitwich) so for maintenance you have to take the landing fee on the chin.

Alternatively you could land in the car park, put the wheels on and push in inside the airport perimeter..:} that's the kind of pennypinching that made this country great!

SB

Al

Prize goes to you for an absolutely brilliant answer, laughed even more than reading another one of sternone's flying death trap opinions.....

Always has been
Always will be !

Al, out of interest, how many circuits did you do?
£17.50 for the landing fee seems reasonable, if, for example, you did another 3 touch and go's and/or an instrument approach, another £30 is about the norm' for an airport of Shoreham's size and operation and given the cost of running the airport, very reasonable.

Three circuits so I suppose they could have charged me three landing fees.

I think Shoreham have a helicopter circuit charge per time period/session @ £30. So it is not charged like proper aeroplane circuits.

Yes, there are parking meters now at Shoreham. They will charge 50p per 3 hours I'm told or £2 per day. Owners of aeroplanes based there will also be required to pay. OUTRAGEOUS I think.

This is typical of the management style that has seen the new 'owners', they actually have a lease from the local authority, achieve the feat of reducing their share value from £394 to 9.5P in the course of about 9 months!

Shoreham is typical of a succesful GA friendly airfield being turned into a total shambles by a succession of incompetent management styles. ATC think they are controlling Heathrow, the Airport Management think it's Heathrow and the small guys (Us GA types) are getting shafted all the time. To charge for all go arounds is just plain greedy and surely will come back to bite them when somebody doesnt go around when they should and crashes. I'm surprised they are not charging people to taxi across the grass!

The same has happened at most 'larger' airfields like Norwich, Bristol, Southampton, Bournemouth Cardiff, Exeter, Southend etc who all, bar Southend, appear to treat the smaller GA world like the dirt on their shoes.

If it wasn't for their own planning conditions, I'm sure Shoreham would be a very profitable piece of housing estate for the local council by now.

I avoid it at all costs, unless somebody else is paying the bills.

Qualify what you mean by 'ATC think they are controlling at Heathrow'. The ATCO's are fully qualified controllers who are required to protect their licence and abide by the same licence requirements set out in MATS pt1 and their own MATS pt2 approved by the CAA, just as a Heathrow controller has.
A difference being that they are dealing with alot of novice, weekend and professional pilots without the same airspace protection or Radar aids to assist them.
As for misssed approaches, I agree a missed approach should not be charged if it is on the grounds of safety. But for training, I am sorry if you are using the ATC facilities for training why should the ATC unit providing you with the service not charge you for it?
Alot of pilots are in the priveliged position to be able to afford to fly. Facilities don't come cheap to install run and maintain..
Of course you are entitled to complain about prices, but think logically about it before you do so.
Oh and I have no connection to EGKA... Wrong end of the country. :}

If you want the kind of read that makes you go :eek:, I suggest you check out the lateset AOPA 'General Aviation' magazine concerning the wonderful commercial record of the two characters who now own/control Shoreham Airport (Erinacous?). How do these people get away with it. :(

I think the two you refer to have just gone from the board of Erinaceous. With a £700,000 payoff. They also own the operation at Fast helicopters at Thruxton and Shoreham, together with Alan Mann Helicopters which they bought from Erinaceous for £1.