Most expensive place to take an SEP ?
 

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

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

Planemike

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?

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

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

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.....

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

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.

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...

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.

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

Biggin Hill
 

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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:

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:

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.

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.

Customs etc
 

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 !