JOE-FBS is perhaps not portraying quite accurately the UK. The Daily Mail newspaper is indeed very popular and the sales reflect that popularity in the UK so there are clearly very many people who agree with the stance of the Daily Mail. BTW I buy no newspaper at all. As for subsidising a "hobby" well why not? Football, Cricket, Swimming, Cycling, etc etc are very heavily subsidised and if you take football for example the subsidies from council taxpayers alone would keep many small airfields open for years. An airfield cannot just be created anywhere and eveyone we lose affects the whole infrastructre and can never be re-created.

I doubt a subsidy is required.

Where you do definitely need a subsidy for is the payment of wages of a bunch of people. This is a scene commonly seen around European council-owned airports, which manage to "employ" dozens of people despite having (in many cases) a very low level of traffic. Union-safeguarded job demarcation ensures that firemen cannot do refuelling, etc. so you need to employ loads of people, and nothing even approaches the cost of employing people (in Europe). And full ATC is expensive - but mandatory for an instrument approach...

But if you were to start a GA airfield from scratch, you would not do that. You would not have any scheduled services and this enables the fire crew to be virtually eliminated. 1 man can do the whole lot including admin (with suitable automation, called a "PC"). 1 other person doing the other stuff.

What is vital is (a) getting the planning permission and (b) getting the rateable values set at realistic levels (a fraction of present-day commercial park rates). The first is theoretically possible (although almost nobody would put enough money where their mouth is to try it) and the second is probably impossible to achieve to a sufficient degree. One would think that a PP restriction to "aviation only" would do it (enabling the rates to be reduced at a tribunal) but I don't think it works well enough.

Shouldn't that be proof readers?

:E

Proof reader's?
and it doesn't give you a free landing if you stay overnight at the very expensive hotel!

It seems a shame that some pubs etc. don't have arrangements with local farmers to run a strip, having recently come back in to Light aviation, there seem to be a dearth of "destination airfields" to take passengers. Duxford being one (but only if you're an aviation nut). It is hard to sell flying to my wife if all she gets is a plastic cup of coffee for £10! Bembridge was one, a nice cafe, but you really need to get off the airfields.
On that subject, would it not be possible to borrow/rent a bike or two? That would encourage visitors.

Or even buy a fold up one.

Are you sure? I know various sports and their facilities get grants from local and national government, if that is what you are referring to. However, sport like almost everything else is struggling for a decreasing size of the cake. Such support as there is is often on the basis of encouraging a healthy life style through sport and similar activities. Aviation would struggle to make an argument there. The reality is that you have to have a certain income to fly and the perception is that it is an activity for the well off.

The most powerful argument is the economic one, i.e. brings jobs and encourages people to the area. A successful GA airfield will do that to a degree but governments will always ask themselves if money can be better spent elsewhere.

I've already got 6 normal bikes, and those are just mine:)
I know some airfield in the USA have cars you can borrow.
Just an idea to try and get more visitors to airfields, but if you don't think it's a good one.......

"Some people have a rather strange view of things, in that they are happy to pay £160 an hour and £1.80 per litre of avgas but begrudge a tenner"

Well quite. Private flying is an expensive hobby in UK. I dabbled four years ago, got 18 hours in and loved every minute, but justifying £100 plus per hour, just for local flights, was too much. So I stopped.

I reckon in UK if you want to persue the hobby and fly say, three or four times a month, and to different airfields, you are looking at a realistic outlay of upwards of £500 per month. And that is in a 'school' spamcan, weather permitting. Landing fees and 'handling' charges (if applied) at other airfields will not help.

My Base airfield was Liverpool EGGP. Nice as you had to circle to let the EZY 737s in before you could land. However I shudder to think what the landing fee might have been had my home school not been based there?

In UK a very expensive hobby. Nice if you can afford it though :)

But surely you knew all that before you started training.

Do you need on-site ATC for an instrument approach ?
 

Sorry for the stupid question, but why is that mandatory ? Several French NDB approaches are at non-towered airports. Regional ATC clearing you for the approach, "call us after landing" ?

...is heavily subsidized. Pool construction and maintenance are considerable (same order of magnitude of a small airfield, and more if you count staffing)
That is very true. For the same reason a golf club is denied subsidies, even if it tries to minimise its fees for maximal membership numbers. On the other hand, by raising taxes, landing fees, training costs and EASA nonsense, flying being for the well off only becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.


A couple of airfields work with reasonable "annual fees"; A couple of airfields give discounts for students at a locally based flight school; A couple of municipal airfields in France are free.

In my country the above situation leads to problematic situations when experienced pilots want to practice and maintain their landing skills.

End of UK Landing Fees
 

I think that this may be on the cards but, before it can happen, it is necessary for EASA to come up with extremely complex regulations to permit pigs to fly. As domestic pigs are different to swine prevalent in the rest of Europe, this is going to take some time.

Yes, that's how it is done in the USA too. The regional IFR controller clears you for the approach, and then you can fly the approach and land at a non-manned airfield.

The same could be done in the UK and indeed does happen already at some place... forgotten the name of it but it is some company-owned runway near Liverpool or something like that, which uses a remote controller which is paid by the runway owner.

The problem is that UK ATC is privatised and the IFR controller's employer will bill the airfield for the approach service. In most scenarios this will be unaffordable. The very busy airfields with seriously rich clientele and jet traffic e.g. Biggin Hill can afford it and Biggin pays Thames Radar for the service, reputed to cost some high 5 digits per year, but they can afford it. I reckon Biggin pays a flat rate per year because they say on the approach plate that procedural service is available only when Thames Radar is INOP, which they obviously would not say if they were paying per-approach, as in typical IFR weather the man in the Biggin tower is doing very little and would be better utilised controlling a procedural approach. This annual billing corresponds with the type of accounting practice seen elsewhere within UK ATC e.g. NATS reportedly want £100k p.a. for a radar feed (which costs them nothing to deliver). So if Biggin wanted to, they could become AFIS or even A/G radio and still retain the instrument approach ;) (Of course Biggin want full ATC for other reasons).

It works in the USA because the radar controller is paid out of, basically, general taxes. Same in France and same in most/all of Europe and the rest of the world.

But it cannot work in the UK, which is incidentally why GPS approaches are a bit pointless in the UK because the places where they would be most useful are places without full ATC, but which do not have enough IFR traffic to afford the IFR controller cost. The only place in the UK where GPS approaches will be relevant is where the airfield has full ATC and either doesn't have an IAP already (very few of those; Redhill comes to mind) or has an IAP and wants to dismantle the navaid(s) to save money but does not need an ILS for PT reasons (a fair few of those e.g. Shoreham, Lydd, etc, but the ones with ILS won't dump the ILS until LPV approaches are up and running... say 10-15 years' time).

I opted out of that when this central dB was created...Mainly due to the fact that at the time so many incompetent fcukwit civil servants had been leaving dB data laying around on trains. I also don't want people accessing my medical records without my knowledge, or worse, accidentally entering incorrect data into them.

Can you imagine if a Dr somewhere messed up and got a digit wrong and you ended up having a history of drug abuse in Glasgow? And then the CAA AME accessed this......!!!

That's a fair point - I didn't know you could opt out.

However, IMHO in the aviation context there is little to gain in opting out since the CAA or FAA can demand your GP record anyway, and if you go to another GP he might well contact the one where he knows you live "out of courtesy". He will certainly ask you for your normal GP's name and address. When I was about 30 I was taken to casualty after a windsurfing accident and when they wanted to know the name of my GP and I said I have never seen one they looked at me like I came from Mars.

Sure most pilots are scared of seeing a doctor until they have clear symptoms of something really serious, but the only sure way to get seen discreetly on something you merely suspect would be to go abroad, I suspect (never having tried it).

Why not? Have you taken this up with your pilot representative organization? AOPA is one which springs to mind.

You can only opt out of having your medical records on line. You cannot opt out of having your medical records follow you from GP to GP when you move.

Where are they held?
Your GP holds your medical records. Notes from treatment received elsewhere, such as in a hospital, will be kept there. But your GP should also receive a summary report, and this will be added to your medical records.

Your medical records will be held by your GP. Notes generated by treatment undergone elsewhere, for example in a hospital or clinic will be kept on-site, but your GP should receive a summary report from other treatment received by you to add to your medical records.

Who holds my records if I do not have a GP?
Your records will be held by the local health authority or health board (in Scotland) on whose medical list your most recent GP was included.

We do not have that option in the UK.

http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/49/SRG_MED160.pdf

Barrow/Walney Island. It's used for BAE's dwindling B200 fleet, run under the authority of the boss of BAE Barrow. The UK requirement is for a controller to sequence traffic to the IAF, so essentially as a minimum to "control" a hold & procedure OCAS. No reason at all why it shouldn't work with a correctly trained category of AFISO (indeed, a number of training approaches work on this basis, technically to be conducted only in VMC and for training purposes) in the future. We can hope... Especially with GPS approaches, already a nicer way of flying most NPA!

I don't think that would work. The AME would only consult the GP on a matter that potentially affected the patient's safety as a pilot, and by extention the safety of his passengers, or even members of the general public. If the GP was unable to provide the information, the AME would simply decline to issue the medical.

I am going to get jumped on (again) by one or two very predictable individuals here, but there is a huge problem with using a FISO for "controlling" airborne traffic: he is not a CONTROLLER. The job demarcation in ATC is absolute. Controllers get paid a lot more and their unions make sure the separation is maintained.

Is this in the UK? A FISO has no authority to control airborne traffic, so this kind of thing might be just people making effectively blind calls which the FISO has to pretend to not hear.

Obviously, one could make it work.

One way is self-announcement. In the sort of bad weather where people might want to fly an IAP for real, there won't be much traffic, so a working protocol could be established. I was doing that in the USA, in IR training, but that was in VMC so no "clearances" were involved. Once you get away from the idea of a formal clearance, then it is easy, but nobody is going to have the balls for that - anywhere.

Another way is to have a real live ATCO in a hut somewhere; nowhere near the place. He would issue the clearances for the approach. If he has no radar, he would be fairly "cheap"... well you would need several of "him" for 24/7 cover so maybe this would cost about £1M/year, total with the costs of the office etc, but the "hut" could cover a large area, using the same system of multiple antennae as London Information covers a large area. In fact London Info could do it but they would need to employ ATCOs instead of FISOs. I don't think this will happen either - too bold and nobody will spend a single penny for a purely IFR GA service.

Another way would be to use the present LARS service for the approach control. LARS is already funded - mainly to stop GA busting CAS. On bad weather days they are doing very little. On good days they are overloaded and usually almost useless (Basic Service). It would work on real IFR days but unfortunately the system would be brought down to its knees by training flights which are done mostly on nice days.