Defending airfields
 

The post on the new threat to North Weald made me think on how to best support a local airfield.

Ultimately we want airfields to stay open because we need the airfields so that we can exercise our hobby. But in the face of economic interest and population pressure in the SE, that carries little weight with most (non-pilot) people and I find it difficult to see how a council officer or MP is able to justify his or her defence of a local airfield before his constituency. (The situation is of course different for a remote location where land is not a rare commodity and transport links are not so numerous.)

So we need arguments that have relevance to the population at large and that don't make our defence look weak. I've listed those that I can think of.

* Heritage: some airfields have a long tradition of flight, played an important role in the past or have listed buildings. How does NW fit into this?

* Protection of the countryside: the airfield and surrounding area are left relatively untouched when compared with a residencial or industrial or office area. The SE is already excessively exploited and airfields do guarantee the maintenance of some valuable breathing space.

* Last but not least, freedom: flying is a difficult, inspiring activity and pilots should have the freedom to exercise their choosen hobby. Flying does require greater infrastructure than most activities but in the UK these are not provided free of charge and most airfields are viable self-supporting economic entities. Systematically closing airfields in fact prevents people from exercising the freedom to fly, an activity on which they have expended much time, efford and money.


I'm sure there are better arguments and better ways to put these forward. All ideas welcome.

Mak

I think the best way is to not give anyone any reason to want to close the airfield in the first place. If there's a published noise abatement circuit, stick to it unless there's a good safety reason not to. If there isn't one, avoid overflying built up areas. Open the club bar to non-pilots and try to get the local community involved with airfield activities.

This might not stop the North Weald type of proposal where some beaurocrat wants land to build houses on and sees a potential target, but hopefully it will stop NIMBY-related issues which I would guess account for a bigger proportion of the problems.

FFF
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Agree with FFF - the main complaints I hear when I talk to 'the locals' about the aerodrome are that pilots ignore the noise abatement turns on takeoff (why? they aren't hard :rolleyes: ) and fly low full-flap power-on approaches over houses to land. We're just pi$$ing off people unnecessarily :(

This is interesting reading:

AvWeb - It takes a village to raise an airport

Obviously some bits, such as state funding, are irrelevant but others are very pertinent.

And it also worth while reminding NIMBYS and the like that when they are next in the cruise on an airliner on their way either on business or holiday, they ask themselves how the person up front got qualified and where he passed his PPL etc .....at some small airfield no doubt

If anyone wants to see good reasons not to destroy an airfield, let them come to Grahame Park in North West London.

This is the former site of Hendon aerodrome, the cradle of British Aviation.

There is no flying activity here now, but plenty of drug problems and vandalism. :(

http://www.nottinghillonline.com/ima...-Pk-aerial.jpg

Not all "locals" want to close down airfields. The situation at Rochester is pretty much opposite; the local authority owns the land and wants to sell it for development and the local people think they have quite enough traffic along that stretch of road already. They prefer a few aircraft to thousands more cars!

I would commend the General Aviation Awareness Council/DfT survey, which is aimed at establishing the actual and quantifyable benefit of GA airfields to (chosing these words with care) the communities they serve.

This survey is still very much under way. I had the pleasure of first distrubuting the 'Pilot & Aerodrome Questionnaire' in AOPA's General Aviation magazine - we had a superb 15% take-up (ask any publisher what kind of response they get, even to a reader offer, to put this in context).

I really think that the best way to protect airfields is through making a cast-iron case for their usefulness to officialdom.