Park on western apron, pay landing/fuel at Almat who will direct you to The Oak pub a few minutes walk away with good grub.
ATC very friendly, pick up ATIS before calling ( no problem if you if you don't), usually given base join. Remember 1500' AMSL when getting close, easy to bust if on QFE as airfield at 270'.
Please visit, you will get airport service at airfield prices.

new procedures
 

park at west apron and pay landing fees in building with yellow 'c' on it where if on a weekend i will be there to meet and greet then try food at dc6 diner..... lift provided if needed then ask diner to ring when finished and I will bring you back to terminal.
should you wish to visit the museum or flight sim ask atc for parking at cov flying school
DH operations assistant patriot aviation/coventry airport

To be fair, I got to be able to afford to buy / run an EC120 by not accepting that people could rip me off just because they thought I could afford it. I should pay more than you for less service? Where did you learn what "fair" means?

The fuel-related discount is more likely to make a difference.

John

How is £26.25 a rip off for landing a 1750kg aircraft? The cost would be the same or higher at many other places.

There are far more important things to get hot under the collar about...

Is there enough interest for a mini-PPRuNe fly-in to Coventry one weekend? :ok:

a bit of moderation please steve, the question was how can we attract visitors to the airfield not who can afford to land what where?;)

john, we have a lot to see here at cov we have the museum and the flight simulator up at the flying school plus we have the dc6 diner which is well worth the visit and we have rotary engineering facilities
our fuel prices are some of the lowest in the uk as are our landing fees.
DH

mini fly in:
if there is enough interest for a fly in to visit maybe the museum with lunch in the diner? then i will see if we can get discount on landing plus there will be a free drink in the diner with lunch and i could also approach the museum and see if group discount can be arranged?.
DH

you could get someone from the Shack restoration team to let them have a look round and also see if you could get into the Nimrod.

Landing fees could be cheaper. Fixed price rather than commercial weight calculations for spam cans.

My aircraft is maintained there so I am a regular visitor and can't fault the service from the airport staff.

"Fixed price rather than commercial weight calculations for spam cans."

couldn't agree more. Also how about pay xx and you get unlimited T&G and full stop landing for the day.

1) NO MANDATORY HANDLING fees for all light aircraft operated non-commercially and not too distant walk from the ramp to the terminal building.

2) Easily accessible ONWARD CONNECTIONS of TRANSPORT such as bus, car rental, train, and bicycle rentals, and good tourist attractions in the local area. There's absolutely NO POINT in landing SOMEWHERE and having to spend a long and expensive TAXI just to get out of it. ALL airports look the same after a while.

3) Competitively priced AVGAS and PARKING rates.

FOR INTERMEDIATE STOPOVERS:

4) A good restaurant / bar based serving hot food and drink.

Aside from the sniping, my comments are intended to be constructive; you want ideas to increase GA traffic into Coventry.
As a heli pilot I consider pricing by MTOW without regard to class is discriminatory against helicopters. I am not alone. The fee is paid for a service given and the staging of fee by MTOW is an attempt to vary the fee proportionate to the service given or cost of providing the service. Higher landing weight requires more runway length and it creates greater wear & tear on the tarmac / grass which leads to higher maintenance costs. Helicopters of the same seat capacity as a fixed-wing tend to be heavier. It takes horsepower to hover, and a strong gearbox to transmit the power. Ignoring the category of machine and having a ‘one size fits all’ MTOW-based fee therefore necessarily charges helicopters more than fixed-wing. Helicopters then pay more, but get less service (we don’t need a kilometre of tarmac or bumb-free mown grass, we don’t need PAPI, we don’t need tarmac or grass taxi-ways, etc) and we cause less wear and tear to the surface that you do have so we cause less maintenance cost.
You will appreciate that we heli pilots therefore feel aggrieved by this approach to landing fees, and many will exercise our right to stay away. (You may have seen a press article about a restraunt wanting to charge the singer Adele £60 to land an R22 on the lawn, they don’t charge for the car park. All credit to the girl, she went elsewhere.) Do you want heli-traffic or not?
Other airfields (who don’t actively wish to discourage helicopter arrivals) take the view that pricing should be for categories of machine. Hence helicopters have their own pricing bands distinct from fixed-wing prices. For example “Light”, “Medium”, “Large” and a charge equivalent to the average applied – say £15, for example, for Light, £25 for Medium over 3000KG MTOW and £40 for over 5000KG MTOW but pick your own categories and prices, these really were just examples.
With the location of your field being handy for refuel on longer journeys I suspect that you could get a lot more helicopter traffic than you do. With the amenities that you have close by it would also be an interesting destination for the Helicopter Club of Great Britain (of which I am a member); but not with your landing fee structure (you would be asking £60 landing fee from some of our members just because their machine has the capability to lift up to 4 ton). If a more “fair” charge schedule applied I personally would be keen to press the HCCGB to organise a trip.
I'm not going to come back to this discussion, so I am happy for you to ignore my input completely if you want.

+1

So many aircraft owners who complain about £10 or £20 knowing they will probably never get sufficient government funding for zero landing fess.

However nobody complains about the airports/heliports that charge £50-£550, including handling.

R81 why don't you start at the london heliport - and work your way down the list?

That was exactly my point, and I was trying to make it in a lighthearted manner.

There are far bigger problems facing general aviation than a great airport like Coventry charging £26.25 for a 1.75 tonne half million pound aircraft to land there...

You ghaps are missing the point - deliberatly?

Highest I have paid to land - £350 (paid twice last Saturday for Battersea). It's not the actual cash amount. I know - lets have a standard landing fee of £26 for all GA aricraft on non-commercial work. I would be happy with that - it would be fair.

Read my post - it's the inbuilt discriminatory nature of the charge mechanism. You don't want to see it - is that because you benefit? or is it just envy because you think helicopter owners must be wealthy so should pay more so you can pay less?

That's OK - Coventry does not get much heli traffic and it looks like you want to keep it that way. Fair enough.

As I said, we heli pilots simply vote with our feet (or rotors). If you don't want the traffic I am not forcing you. There are plenty of options.

I really am struggling to understand why you are interpreting this as anti-rotary?

A Cessna 152 will be charged £10.80
A Robinson R22 will be charged £9.30
You are charged £26.25, but a heavy SEP would also be charged the same.

So you can land an R22 at Coventry for less than the 152. Where is the discrimination?

Coventry have chosen to base their landing fees upon MTOW. They didn't do this to deliberately penalise helicopters - it's an absurd way of interpreting the situation!

john we do not discourage rotory in fact the chairman and owner of the airport is a rotary pilot? I will however run your thoughts by our base manager .
DH

stevelup, well said.

yes steve well said!
DH

Yes Steve, well said. You convinced me when you compared the lightest, cheapest 2-seat rotory aircraft today with the lightest, cheapest, 2-seat fixed wing aircraft available today.... No!, Wait!.... Did you just make my exact point by having to select a fixed-wing from higher in the pecking order just to make the same weight???????????

Helicopters are inherently heavier than fixed wing. Therefore a single schedule based on MTOW regardless of aircraft class is inherently discriminatory.


Look. You are right, I am wrong, have a great life and good luck attracting aircraft to Coventry.

tell you what if you rotary pilots promise to visit more then i will have a word with the base manager and other folks here and see if we cant have a rate solely for rotary aircraft?
DH