please don’t forget that a lot of closing times and restrictins are legal ones imposed by local communities and Nimby brigades all over.
And with today’s means to follow up flights and to report them to authorities, quite a lot of airfields and airports are simply left with not much choices than to be stricter than they probably would be.
If you think 600 Euros is steep, while I was still working at handling I vividly recall the airport I worked at having no choice than to recall a full 500 person 747 from the runway at 22:01 when they were fully ready to go, sending 500 people to hotels and creating a huge mess. This was not a single occurrence at the time and while this kind of madness belongs mostly to the past, I can see movements afoot to take airports to court to go back to such practices after having exercised some sense for the last years.
2 minutes may well seem to be harsh but so are the neighbours and legal eagles waiting to snap up such incidents and make huge problems with it. Apart, I take such “2 minute” stories with a bucket of salt… recently I was confronted with a case like that where a pilot said he departed 2 minutes late, alas flight data monitoring revealed it was actually closer to 10 minutes. Time flies if you are in a hurry….
So @gallois post is a very useful reminder that tolerance today is a very precious good which can in most caes no longer be expected by airfields mostly due to the lack of it they face and the constant threats of legal action and movements to close them.
So take this for what it is: A warning not to be late and not to dick around with flight planning. As bad as it sounds, it may well be a good idea to divert early rather than make very bad experiences later. Or ask on the radio if you are still accepted early on. I did that twice in recent years once for slot and once for closure and in both cases was allowed to continue without reprecussions, because I asked ahead.
A friend of mine had to go around in Cannes (LFMD) at 20:01 after tower has closed. They were on short final.
Do not expect tolerance… They finally landed at Nice and got a nice invoice for the night/landing/pax/To the day after.
