@dentdeloupe
Water service and toilet service? Does your PA46 have a toilet? Did the service your toilet? Is that a mandatory charge?
Did you require pushback?
That bill is shocking. I want to visit Corfu in a 1050 kg single and would swallow a few hundred EUR for the convenience, but that is insane.
WhiskeyPapa wrote:
Water service and toilet service? Does your PA46 have a toilet? Did the service your toilet? Is that a mandatory charge?
Did you require pushback?
These are unit prices – @dentdeloupe didn’t pay for them, unit number is zero…… That said, this is an outrageous bill !!
That 1000 EUR invoice is truly shocking. I think unfortunately that regulation by law (through AOPA ect) is the only way to combat this kind of outrageous pricing structure of people who apparently have no sympathy or understanding of GA. To have rules protecting the little guy so to speak. Much like the 2<T is freeing small planes from enroute charges.
Normally I’m a keen supporter of free market forces, but in case of airports it seams to not work. The main problem is that for somebody to provide an alternative (another airport) is not possible in many cases. Large airports might compete internally where airlines can push the prices by sheer volume, but it leaves no room GA aircraft. Free market will only work if somebody can provide alternatives. Setting up an alternative GA airport is not possible in many cases due to various issues like noise regulations, environment issues, free land, free airspace ect… Bigger airports closer to larger cities have something close to monopoly. It Ironic that in “capitalistic US” airports are regarded much more as a public piece of infrastructure (like a highway bridge ect.) than in “socialistic Europe” where airports are left for private enterprises to run and use their monopoly to full extend as that insane bill clearly shows.
The other reason GA needs lawmakers protection is that GA has no financial power. 99,999% of all money is in airline industry and the associated passenger shopping. Sometimes when I fly commercial I get confused for a moment if I entered a shopping mall or an airport.
Tomorrow I will fly to Craiova in Romania which is another airport with unreasonable prices :-(
Ok, I will admit to having sinned… I flew to a Fraport airport last week. 
Fact is, Fraport has taken over too many of the “touristically valuable” airports… Hence, it’s not just a problem for those who merely need an airport of entry for Greece (and they can sometimes avoid Fraport by using places like Ioannina) and then fly on to small domestic airport. It’s also a matter of getting to some of the nice places for a stay. For example, the entire west (Ionic) coast of Greece has been “fraported” – Corfu, Zakynthos, Cefallonia and Preveza are now all Fraport.
In my case, I simply desired to go back to Skiathos (LGSK), which is, well, simply a wonderful place in May.
At least, the invoice was very much as expected:
Note they only charged me once for getting two IFR slots (arrival and departure).
If you stay for say a few days, invoices are usually somewhat consistently in the 400€ range. Another pilot I know just stayed at Samos and his invoice was a little bit below that, but then he did not need customs.
So, in summary: technical landings are ~300, and longer stays of 3-4 days are ~400 for Fraport airports. That’s what we have to put up with for now. And even if Fraport decided to halve their fees for the future, it wouldn’t change all too much (maybe 60-90 Euros less), since it’s the handling agents who now take a big chunk of money as well (even if you are an AOPA member).
Other than the fees, the Skiathos experimence was good. Just send them an email wih your details in advance and they will do the rest for you (PPR and slot). Likewise on departure: no more need these days to walk up to the CAA office, do silly paperwork and pay landing fees separately. I just went to the Goldair office and they had the invoice ready for me.
By the way, that other pilot used Ioannina for entry and Avgas and said it was indeed a good experience. Total fees 63€. On his departure, there were thunderstorms in the Ioannina area (its inland location is certainly a drawback of this airport) so he preferred to use Corfu. And, apart from the (expected) 300€ bill, he said it was a dreadful experience yet one more time.
I know it’s a bit off-topic, but I thought it would be some nice black humour to report an experience on May 13 in Dresden EDDC just to put into perspective how much people really must like Greece to put up with the Fraport sort of sh!t. We arrived on Sat, stayed overnight, and departed on Sun.
This was a national arrival/departure so customs was not required. Don’t know what that would be extra, but still …
The airport is essentially an international airport with airline traffic. There is a separate GA parking area just off the arrival end of runway 04, with all of a 100m taxi. Paved parking with imbedded rings for tiedown ropes.
- met by follow-me car and led to designated parking spot
- fuel truck arrived within a minute
- as soon as refueling was done, a minivan drove us over to the terminal (GA is separate from airline handling, with its own waiting area, preflight, and of course guichet for payment, requesting transport back to a/c, and so on at departure)
- escort out to arrivals area
- departure was essentially the reverse, with GA-specific “security control” after the guichet and then directly out to the waiting minivan
Charges for a C172, 1157kg MTOW, pilot + 1x pax, 1 overnight parking … drum roll …..
Fixed landing charge – Euro 11.66
Infrastructure Fee – Euro 5.50
19% VAT – Euro 3.26
Total charge incl 19% VAT = Euro 20.42
Dresden is a nice city, and great to walk around. Lots of street life with cafes, but it was a Saturday evening.
We’ll be certainly going back, and will also be using it as a stop enroute through Germany heading any direction.
Dresden is a nice city, and great to walk around. Lots of street life with cafes, but it was a Saturday evening.
We had great fly-in in Dresden last summer.
https://www.euroga.org/forums/trips-airports/7975-dresden-eddc-12-13-august-2017?page=1
BTW I didn’t get any additional immigration control fee on my bill arriving out of Schengen are.
Greek slot related discussion moved to the Greek slot thread
Let’s face it: they simply don’t care.
The arrogance of that Fraport guy speaks volumes however about how far into a corner Greece was pushed to do that deal.
I know Greece has much bigger issues than this but that is no reason to allow this to happen. GA – well, the portion that actually flies somewhere rather than slagging off Shoreham for charging £30 
– spends a lot of money locally; they didn’t come on a €300 package holiday.
