Approach fees for an IR course
 

Hi,

Just wondering what people who have done their IRs paid for approach fees during the course. Slightly confused because one school is telling me £375 and another is telling me £1000.

Obviously there is a bit of a difference there but I would be grateful if anyone could help me out on this. I believe both schools do approaches at Cranfield, Southend,Cambridge, Birmingham and possibly Benson (not sure).

Why the difference in price? Which one is more realistic?

Thanks for your help.

Foz

It depends on where you go, how often and whether or not the FTO passes them on at cost or charges you a mark up.

We absorb all home approach fees and only charge for "away" fees at cost. To be honest, there is no reason why anyone should mark up the away fees.

Im not suggesting any school marks up their approach fees - where im thinking of training all the aproaches will be away fees as the home airfield does not have an instrument approach. I just want to know if £1000 for approach fees is about the norm for an IR course?


Foz

Where I work you do 15 hours on the a/c and you are only charged approach fees away from base airport with no mark up.
The fees are between £15 and £28 and I estimate you would do 5-6 away approaches. Thjis will vary depending on FTO so I would suggest asking the current students.

I did my training at Stapleford, with all ILS/NDB appraoches at Southend..... costs £14.50 (give or take a fee pence) per appraoch. I think in all I paid about £400 in appraoch fees over the course.
If you have a guy who just can't get the hang of ILS's then it's going to cost him a bit more but I would say £1000 sounds a bit OTT.

Go to Tayflite, Perth, they do not charge for approaches and the cost per hour on the PA34 is very good value indeed. I recently passed my IR with them and they are excellent.

as others have said depends WHERE you do your MEIR

I am doing my MEIR at Carill Aviation at Southampton airport, where there is full ILS, VOR, ADF, DME and radar coverage and all these are included for airport based aircraft, which means everytime we come back we do a couple of holds followed by a procedure for an NDB or ILS or some radar vectored approaches and these cost me nothing

but

mr x who is doing his IR from the airport up the road with out approach aids (old sarum, blackbushe etc..) will have to pay approaches and fees at all visited aerodromes, bournemouth being approx GBP 27 per approach !

Obviously for me all approaches and landings away from Southampton do cost money but overall will cost approx GBP 350.

Hope this helps
Spit :ok:

You can spend a whole day in France, (Calais. Le Touquet) and pay €5-10 for as many approaches, holds as you like! Obviously this means finding a school in the south.
As you progress, more time will be required at the "test" airfields, flying complete routes and profiles.
Filton I heard charged for each hold!! (may have changed)

When I did my IMC course, I got the whole way through the course without paying for a single approach, except for the test itself. And I was based at an airfield without any approaches.

What we did was, for non-precision approaches, do them away from the airfield. For example, for a VOR/DME approach, all you need is a VOR/DME, you don't need a runway. Just add 1000' or 2000' to all of the altitudes on the approach plate.

ILSs are a little more difficult, but I was fortunate to be based not too far from Farnborough. Farnborough ATC are a great bunch of people - they won't let you pre-book an ILS, but if you're airborne and ask for one they'll let you do it free of charge, traffic permitting. I was never denied the ILS throughout the whole course, but was occassionally restricted to going around not below 400' because of traffic on the runway.

No idea if that would be acceptable for an IR course, though, or if any schools actually do anything like that?

FFF
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If you are ever passing Farnborough, giving them a shout on the radio, you can do an ILS for free if they are not too busy.

Interesting what Boeingbus says about practicing routes and appraoches at the test field. The first and only time I went to Cranfield was for the test.......... and I never once flew one of the test routes (other than in the sim).

As for going to France for the day, I think it's a geat idea but for some reason schools aren't keen on doing it.