Exactly. The airfields make a rod for their own backs.
Get rid of the need for PPR, then you don’t need to pay someone to sit and answer the phone for PPR calls. Make landing fee payments online, no need to man a desk, another salary saved (and in the case of a full ATC airfield, an Excel macro can be used to catch anyone who didn’t pay). Just give us somewhere to park and an entrance to get in and out and self handling, and no silly rules and most of us will be happy.
Take a look over the Atlantic and wonder why US airfields can handle GA traffic without any problems. Are we really so much thicker than the Americans we can’t do it?
alioth wrote:
Take a look over the Atlantic and wonder why US airfields can handle GA traffic without any problems. Are we really so much thicker than the Americans we can’t do it?
Apart from the very true (but obvious) fact stated by the Cranfield guy (that these airports are businesses and not infrastructure, so there is no requirement for them to find a way to do it), in the UK this kind of can’t-do attitude is basically because of a particular kind of poor-quality low-level manager that we’ve managed to breed over the last few decades.
These people:
The personality type is very distinctive and aviation attracts them because it has strong elements of security and safety, both concepts on which these people are very keen.
Very accurate!
There are probably interesting sociological reasons for why these types breed preferentially 
Graham wrote:
that these airports are businesses and not infrastructure, so there is no requirement for them to find a way to do it)
But even that is a feeble excuse. The airport I learned to fly at in Houston was privately owned, did not receive a penny in government money (in fact paid handsome amounts of property tax), yet operated as a profitable business and at the same time was welcoming to light GA!
Mostly in part because it didn’t have all that low level “jobsworth” manager crap that you enumerated. That’s a huge impediment to operating a profitable business. They didn’t even charge a landing fee and they were still profitable.
They ran the whole operation on two full timers (the manager and one full time line guy), a couple of part time line guys (college students mostly) and a contracted maintenance guy to cut the grass. The same operation in the UK somehow needs 20+ staff to run, and has short opening hours, silly rules and lots of yellow jackets. It’s almost like they want to shoo away any business.
I still think it’s a mindset and perception issue. You just have to look at how professional and well fitted Southend is, and not much shy of £30 for radar vectored ILS approach, landing, and 2 hours parking. Southend is pretty much London’s Le Torquet. Literally you are 1 hour away from train to London Liverpool Street, it really is a great gateway to the UK.
alioth wrote:
The same operation in the UK somehow needs 20+ staff to run, and has short opening hours, silly rules and lots of yellow jackets. It’s almost like they want to shoo away any business.
Precisely. And if you sit those jobsworths down to debate it they will spout badly-misinterpreted and badly-implemented regulation at you in an attempt to justify their own obstructiveness. But if one peels back the BS and examines the actual text of the regs, you’d be surprised how much is allowed.
I think Graham has hit the nail on the head with that type.
they’re the more regulations = more better .
I suspect the CAA is to blame for some of it e.g. PPR. When Shoreham lost ATC and went A/G, the CAA limited it to one movement every 10 mins.
The managers certainly claim that the regulations are imposed on them, and create the bulk of the work and cost.
But then, when you think about it, one more regulation might have saved Dave Phillips and his colleagues lives. It’s not a simple equation.
Peter wrote:
When Shoreham lost ATC and went A/G, the CAA limited it to one movement every 10 mins.
Which is absurd. We can do more than that on a nice Sunday afternoon at Andreas. I hope that the APPG on GA was told about this situation, maybe they can apply a bit of pressure to prevent things like this in the future.
