GA Airports around London

Timothy wrote:

But then, when you think about it, one more regulation might have saved Dave Phillips and his colleagues lives

It’s possible, but as far as I can see it is statistically very unlikely. From reading countless accident reports we learn that there are very few ‘new’ accidents and that it is far more likely that someone, somewhere, did something inadvisable – quite possibly breaking an existing regulation. Or something on the aeroplane just broke.

Peter wrote:

When Shoreham lost ATC and went A/G, the CAA limited it to one movement every 10 mins.

I would genuinely have loved to have been in that meeting. How anyone could genuinely argue a safety case for that (other than less activity = less risk) and think it was the right thing to do is beyond me.

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:
•Enjoy controlling, restricting, denying and exerting power over their fellow man
•Like to have their little empire where people defer to them and where nothing happens without their permission
•Look for reasons why something can’t be done rather than why it should be or how it could be
•Interpret any rule or regulation in the strictest possible way
•Will regularly claim that anything and everything is illegal
•Expect deference in return for their grudging cooperation with anything
•Are keener on clipboards and high-vis than they are on their actual business
•Enjoy a confrontation

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.

I think that it’s too easy be belittle people because they do something that you don’t like. Unless we understand where they are coming from, we’ll never learn to make the most of the situation.

Rather than thinking that someone with a vindictive and power hungry attitude has been appointed to a senior position, I’d suggest that the truth is possibly more like this:

Someone owns a very valuable piece of real estate, which they are running an airport on.
One day it crosses their mind about just how valuable the asset is and how much capital they have tied up in it.
They see some other airports turning a handsome profit.
They think about their airport and why it’s losing money, or just about breaking even and wonder what is going wrong.
They realise that they haven’t paid it enough attention over the years. So they appoint someone senior to be the airport manager and task them with “turning the place around and generating a reasonable return on capital”.

The person appointed has no loyalty to GA, Bizjets, nor airlines. They just want to achieve the task that they’ve been set, earn some performance related bonus, and be seen as a success so they can demand a bigger salary and move onto a bigger airport.
They assess the task that they have.
They realise that to achieve a decent profit with GA will be a big task. They needs lots of traffic, to generate lots of landing fees.
But of course landing fees don’t generate that much. They are more the cherry on top.
So the need lots of based aircraft too, paying hangerage.
They also need lots of people around to generate footfall so that the property for rent is valuable to a café, maintenance organisation, flight school etc.
The realise that GA is mainly reluctant pay a significant landing fees and only turns up in significant number if
a) It’s a sunny day
b) There is no strong wind
c) The forecast for the past two days agreed that those would be the conditions, and
d) It’s a weekend.

They also realise that traffic dies off significantly outside the summer months.

So really they are looking at a long period of trying to develop a bigger number of based aircraft, from an ever falling fleet size, when people are reluctant to move from an airport closer to their home. This will take many years, and may not be successful in the end. It suffers from a chicken and egg situation where investment is often required and some years of loss making to attract those based aircraft, before they have sufficient based aircraft to be profitable. They might not be afforded that time or investment to get the job done.

So they look at alternatives. One airline flight per week could make a huge difference to revenue, but the runway isn’t long enough and they’d require significant investment in security and facilities, and perhaps a lengthy airspace reclassification procedure. Not an option.

They look at bizjets. One per day could generate significant income, and has been noted above, could pay the same as a whole day of light GA. Bizjets don’t turn around because it’s a weekday, or the forecast wasn’t so good. They don’t stop flying during the winter. They aren’t price sensitive.

Attracting 7 bizjets a week might be a big job, but it looks a lot more doable than attracting a lot of light GA to base at the airport and pay decent fees. And if successful, it won’t take years to achieve.

To the new manager considering how to achieve the task that he’s been given, attracting 7 bizjets per week seems like the most doable option.

They won’t want light GA distracting them from their task. No problem….light GA can continue and aren’t a problem. That is until the day that their bizjet traffic starts to complain that they were delayed by light GA aircraft, have no room to park because all the apron is taken up with Cessnas, or light GA activities requires some significant investment. Then it becomes a distraction from the new manager’s primary focus, and takes time and resources that he doesn’t want to expend on something that isn’t the solution to his problem.

That I think is probably closer to the truth in most cases. He doesn’t want people looking up to him as a god, begging for the crumbs from his table. Rather he doesn’t want a distraction from achieving the difficult task that he’s been set.

If you can properly understand what you are dealing with, you can then try to understand the solutions. Calling people names takes your focus away from the real problem.

Both are probably true.

I’m talking about the established airport manager, and if I’m honest probably more at the lower end. I think you’re probably talking about the upper end? Either way, I don’t think it’s an area attracting particularly good people.

I’m less getting at their attitude around which customers they want and more at the factors that give rise to short opening hours, job protectionism, inflexible arrangements, etc.

Sorry if you feel it’s calling people names, but I feel it’s describing the beast. I very rarely feel treated like a customer at an airport – more an inconvenience.

I do think Oxford is a great case study where light GA works well with the bizjets. Landing is free with a relatively small uplift in fuel (and not expensive without), it’s open 6am to 10pm every day, and you even get free drinks in the jet centre.

By working with the light GA community, they have also generated positive use of the Oxford Radar service (note: provided for free), and created more of a buzz around the airfield in general.

Things like the Oxford Parkway train service and the connecting bus have better business cases because the light GA at the airport increases footfall not only with the people that come and go, but also the support functions.

For example, the car hire centre at Oxford may not be there if it was not for light GA – the one person a week in a Cessna 152 who rents a car tips the balance between the car hire centre being there and it not being. And having it there makes the place more attractive for bizjets. So you get a multiplier effect.

It’s really not that hard.

I don’t think it is calling names and at certain places there very much is a “can’t do” attitude.

The things talked about existed too at the privately owned airport I learned to fly at, but they managed it just fine. Similarly, I’ve turned up at the jet FBO at airports in the US in a rather oily TriPacer and got the full red carpet treatment, they welcomed me just as they would a bizjet owner. They didn’t see me as a nuisance from which money was to be extracted then sent away as quickly as possible with as little help as possible – they arranged a car and a hotel for me just like they would for someone stepping off a bizjet. The thing is, you never know but that TriPacer pilot might just turn out to be someone who turns up in a bizjet in their professional life and FBOs in the US seem to understand this.

Agree Charlie, Oxford always seems to have done a good job and don’t over-complicate things. I did get berated once for not wearing high-viz though ;-)

I think dublinpilot makes very good points about light GA being a “difficult customer”. The UK community in particular tends to be a whingeing whining lot which tends to slag the airport off on social media afterwards.

But there are still ways to get revenue from difficult customers; this is an everyday challenge in nearly all business.

And nearly all airport costs are fixed costs, so every £30 landing fee goes straight to your bottom line. Same with the cafe; the material cost in commercial catering is negligible so again most of the price of a meal etc goes straight to your bottom line (assuming the airport owns the cafe).

In normal business the simplest way to select customers for “quality” is to pitch your corporate image appropriately. This is everything about your company. Not just the way you communicate but everything all the way to the pricing structure. Pretty obviously a £30 landing fee will deter most “difficult” customers. Then you need a “social media person” to deflect the worst slagging off. It needs to be someone who can string more than words together… yes this is a challenge these days For example somehow Biggin Hill and Shoreham charge the same while Biggin avoided the slagging off while Shoreham did not. Somehow Biggin escaped the “flyer forum assasination” treatment. How, is one case worth examining.

In general, offering a premium quality service at a higher price will select the higher quality customers.

I’ve been in business 41 years… this is no rocket science. The challenges and their solutions are well established. I think one problem we have here is that these airport managers are not competent business managers. They got some MBA from a “fake university” (which the UK is full of these days) and they are struggling.

There are also some real issues. For example if your planning permission limit is 80k movements and you are achieving 70k with a £30 landing fee, it is totally pointless to drop your landing fee to the £5 necessary to attract the community which wants to pay only £5.

On a recent trip from UK to Dusseldorf we found the airport and the Jet Centre (mine is a C172 BTW) great to deal with. Friendly and helpful and as we were one of only 2 light GA aircraft on the apron amongst a lot of bizjets, it was very comforting to have such a good reception. Dusseldorf is a very big airport but we were slotted in quite seamlessly.
Years ago I was a regular visitor in a C172 to Luton then quite suddenly the fees became prohibitive, and yes I mean truly prohibitive not just expensive. What went wrong?

No, Farnborough did it exactly the wrong way. They selected just the top end. As a result, there is no activity there most of the time.

They probably did it to create an “exclusive” air so their clients don’t get to mix with “dirty piston GA” (as it was once described by the manager of Aberdeen airport). But financially what they are doing is nuts. They could charge £50, for example, and have a nice GA lounge, etc…

Plus also management laziness. Cover your costs, plus a bit, and leave it there.

They do also have a tight planning permission limit however. How that happened, with an airport which used to be a centre of so much aviation activity, is another story.