LFAT is not a particulary popular destination with French pilots as in comparison with other nearby airports it is seen as ecpensive unless ypu.want to vIsit Le Touquet.
This audit I will imagine will be considering several factors.
1) Its value as a local amenity in the same way as public football and rugby pitches and tennis courts provide a facility to the local population and how much the local tax payer is prepared to pay to support such an amenity. In the case of LFAT this is really down to the flying club’s position in the local community.
2) How much? financially speaking does the airfield contribute in terms of local tourism.
eg restaurants, hotels, bike, car and taxi hire.
3) As LFAT is used by more Brits (GA wise) than any other airfield in France, do the numbers coming, the.taxes they pay including that from fuel and their contribution to tourism cover the cost of the C+I service they offer and any extra ATS service needed.
I imagine that will be judged by how many aircraft land and how long they stay.
I think there is a figure allocated per person to tourism in a similar way to average weight calculations per person on an airline flight.
Interesting.
There is virtually zero club activity at most of the French airports I have been to. Deauville and La Rochelle were busy enough; the rest dead. Obviously the club activity is found at all the other places; not ones that offer customs/immigration.
Brits do spend a lot of money there – even a lunch is pricey enough.
@nestor may know more.
There is no argument that Brits spend a lot of money at Le Touquet. The question is how many are coming.via GA and LFAT?
Getting to LFAT conventionally is a huge hassle. I’ve never met anybody who did that. But in the context of say a 1 week French holiday, it’s possible.
Many Brits come and stay at Paris Plage and other parts of Le Touquet by car. Its been a poular destination for years 2 hours or less south of Calais by car its both a good stopping off point for going further south or to stay for a few days.
Peter wrote:
public service delegation.What is that?
A public service delegation is when a part of the state (commune / city, département, national state, …) delegates a public service to a private sector provider. It can be trash pickup or processing, managing the airport, building and managing the autoroutes (motorway?), running the town’s water system, the sewers or a myriad other things. It is the role of that part of the state to provide that public service, and instead of hiring civil servants, buying equipments, etc to it themselves, they contract a private sector provider. The private sector provider is remunerated in a way that is substantially linked to the “operating profit” of providing the service; often just by levying fees directly from the users; usually these fees are specified or capped or regulated in the contract with the part of the state.
Cor it’s worse than I thought. There will definitely be a penny pinching exercise going on.
If it’s anything like rubbish collection things will start off ok but once the contractor has got his feet under the table who knows🤑
Nothing official YET, (Because of security?) but in the ‘downtown back street bars’ in France the talk is that with King Charles & the Queen visiting both Paris and Bordeaux from 20 September to 22 September, this MIGHT be the opportunity for him to call in to Le Touquet en route for the naming of the airport after his mother?
Looks like King Charles gave his approval for the name change. Also a nice article for those curious about the history and the British connections to Le Touquet.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20230907-le-touquet-the-most-british-of-french-resorts
