Airborne_Again wrote:
but because they had grand plans for expanding airline operations at the airport
Isn’t that always the reason for throwing GA out?
The problem is that the planned expansion usually never materialises. Not many people can match the creativity and optimism of an Airport Manager when it comes to predicting future customer volume. For a more likely view of the future, take any number they come up with and divide it by at least 3.
Airborne_Again wrote:
That said, my understanding is that visiting GA can use Bromma at an not low, but acceptable, cost by using Grafair as handler.
I looked at how to get to Stockholm while touring last Summer, so it would depend upon your view of “acceptable cost” and the slot requirements etc…
You can land at Farnborough too if you really want to aswell 
wbardorf wrote:
In almost all cases, regulations are a reflection of society
But in the case of the rant in the YouTube video, it’s not regulations that’s the problem. It’s arbitrary rules put in place by airfields, independent of the regulator.
I spent years flying in the US before flying here. 90% of all of the ballache of flying here compared to the US are not rules put in place by EASA or the CAA or even local planning authorities, but silly rules put in place by the airports. Bizarre nonsense like having to apply days in advance BY POST! with a fee! if you want to land at Oban outside of bankers hours. In the US you’d just self-announce and land and make your own arrangements. Then PPR strictly by telephone is another source of needless bullshit. It actually takes longer to research all the weird rules for your destination airfield than it does to actually plan the en-route part of the flight, and that’s just for VFR in a plane that weighs half of a Honda Civic.
It’s the airports that are killing GA here, not the regulators. The airports are strangling the very business they are supposed to be attracting with silly local rules. Unfortunately the airfields that don’t have silly rules are all in the middle of nowhere and not very good for ground transportation.
Does anyone know why airports do that in general?
What is the real reason?
Legislation?
Regulator extra requirements (e.g. Germany regarding a man with a fire extinguisher on the ground, or in UK and ATC must be present in case of an IAP)?
Insurance limitations?
Local planning regulations re: time of they day and movements per year?
Or poor business management and they put a lot of effort to justify the creation such an environment, their personal fiefdom where they can do nothing until the owner’s money run out?
alioth wrote:
It’s the airports that are killing GA here, not the regulators.
I think there’s definitely truth to this, although the regulators are not helping. Things like GPS approaches, PCL, etc.
As I think has been mentioned before the mindset behind it is a common one. More regulation, more control, less freedom for the pilots.
Does anyone know why airports do that in general?
What is the real reason?
It’s a really good Q.
We’ve done this before in many threads, I am sure…
Human psychology is the main cause, and it isn’t just airport managers. It is pilots too.
Airports don’t like to stay open with no staff because many UK pilots won’t be honest in leaving the tenner in the landing fees box. Clearly this is true to some extent but is it bad enough? I don’t know. I do know my local stopped the out of hours option some years ago because one based pilot was abusing it, and being a “public license airport” they were unable to take action against one based operator and not others (so I have been told). Over-reaction? Probably.
PCL is illegal for licensed airports. That one is 100% CAA CYA stupidity. It is not illegal for unlicensed airports but this was openly discovered only a few years ago.
Most airports have opening hours agreed with the local authority as a condition of planning permission. That’s a tough one. The US has a much better attitude to personal enterprise. In Europe, if you are good, you have to hide it. Most European pilots who fly a lot are business / professionals and virtually all of them hide it from their customers. Standard European envy stuff.
And so on.
This varies dramatically by country. The comments above may apply to the UK, but certainly not to countries like Germany or Switzerland where an airfield has to suffer through long drawn out approvals by local, provincial, and federal authorities (and suffer appeals against their decisions from interest groups). Airfields can’t make any opening hours or PPR requirement decisions on their own … these are more or less forced upon them and are written into their operations approvals.
An good example is St Gallen-Altenrhein airport (LSZR). This is an IFR Airport of Entry that is closed over lunch-time from 12:00-13:30 LT. That is silly, and complicates flight planning unnecessarily. It is definitely not the wish of the owner/operator of the airport. It is part of its government operations approval, dictated by neighbours who want to have their lunchtime without aircraft noise.
alioth wrote:
But in the case of the rant in the YouTube video, it’s not regulations that’s the problem. It’s arbitrary rules put in place by airfields, independent of the regulator.I spent years flying in the US before flying here. 90% of all of the ballache of flying here compared to the US are not rules put in place by EASA or the CAA or even local planning authorities, but silly rules put in place by the airports. Bizarre nonsense like having to apply days in advance BY POST! with a fee! if you want to land at Oban outside of bankers hours. In the US you’d just self-announce and land and make your own arrangements. Then PPR strictly by telephone is another source of needless bullshit. It actually takes longer to research all the weird rules for your destination airfield than it does to actually plan the en-route part of the flight, and that’s just for VFR in a plane that weighs half of a Honda Civic.
It’s the airports that are killing GA here, not the regulators. The airports are strangling the very business they are supposed to be attracting with silly local rules. Unfortunately the airfields that don’t have silly rules are all in the middle of nowhere and not very good for ground transportation.
100% true. It’s a mentality.
And as Ive just posted on another thread, changing a mentality or culture is a very difficult thing to do.
