Peter wrote:
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.
Of course light GA is a difficult customer when you make things difficult for them! What does light GA really need? A place to park the aircraft, a fuel station and a gate to enter/leave the airport. That’s it, really! Everything else, including a briefing room, is a bonus. As others have pointed out, you can supply these necessities with very little investment or manpower.
That’s true but also there is also the turning up only on nice days and, with the very low currency of many, clogging up the approach with poor radio and flying procedures. Plus there is the institutionalised “them and us” attitude of many.
“What does light GA really need? A place to park the aircraft, a fuel station and a gate to enter/leave the airport.”
I think the same + toilette + customs + approaches (afis/atc) something along LFAT/LFAC models, I personally don’t care about airport restaurants as long as you can commute to the nearest town
In the UK, Southend/Lydd have instrument approaches and fits the bill, especially Southend for a London commute while for non-IFR airports, Elstree seems to fit the bill for London with good mix of Bizjet/GA
Yes they can be difficult and there will be the odd slagging on social media, but the social media side of it is nothing for airports compared to trying to run a pub/restaurant/hotel!
To build on what AA says, if you just give them what they need then it makes it harder for them to be difficult. Let them land, park, pay, and get on with it. They become difficult when you demand PPR, yellow jackets, silly joins, airside passes, restricted hours, etc.
Not 100% sure why Shoreham got the treatment and Biggin didn’t, although Biggin is hardly flavour of the month over there right now. Perhaps because Biggin has an ILS it gets mentally put into a different category (regional airport or whatever) whereas Shoreham without one gets thought of as small. Perhaps it was because Shoreham was a favourite (seaside) destination for many at the lower end of GA before the fees went up, whereas Biggin is not much of a destination so not considered much of a loss?
I still think there is mileage in Shoreham increasing their traffic by varying their landing fees according to the weather. Clearly when CAVOK they need to use price as a tool to manage demand, but that is not necessary when it is BKN020.
Peter wrote:
with the very low currency of many, clogging up the approach with poor radio and flying procedures
That is a very big problem at any nice destination on a sunny day.
Worst one I saw was one very busy day at Le Touquet when a British pilot in a C150 established himself on a three-mile final at 70 knots. He then proceeded to stop on the runway for his after-landing checks. Much orbiting, much going around.
Peter wrote:
every £30 landing fee goes straight to your bottom line
You wrote this many times, but I fear even that is not true.
The reality is that, for each light GA movement at a “proper” airport, they way things are in the UK, at the very least, they have to (and this is disregarding the additional ATC efffort):
…and every time this is done, resources are bound and this costs money, with today’s cost of staff. 30 pounds is thus drained very quickly in such way. Of course, you could argue that These guys have to be there anyway, waiting for the next bizjet to come, but that not how economics and staff planning work. It does simply NOT go straight to the bottom line.
The truth is, they prefer one light GA coming, at 300 pounds, over 10 of them coming at 30 (or even 40) pounds. More profit.
Not 100% sure why Shoreham got the treatment and Biggin didn’t, although Biggin is hardly flavour of the month over there right now. Perhaps because Biggin has an ILS it gets mentally put into a different category (regional airport or whatever) whereas Shoreham without one gets thought of as small. Perhaps it was because Shoreham was a favourite (seaside) destination for many at the lower end of GA before the fees went up, whereas Biggin is not much of a destination so not considered much of a loss?
Yes, I think these are the two reasons.
In business you have fixed costs and you have variable costs. Until you reach what is called “capacity”, all income goes straight to your bottom line (i.e. it is net profit).
This is Accountancy 101…
The question is whether light GA activity causes the “capacity” to be reached. I think it does not – unless the management setup ensures that it happens artificially. ATC or AFIS or A/G costs are fixed. There is a general need for an “assistant” or “secretary” and from many places I have been to they probably do the PPR calls these days. Maintenance is largely fixed, and bizjets do a lot of damage to tarmac; much more than light GA. The remaining costs (rent, lights, etc) are obviously fixed. And remember that bizjet airports do have loads of “courtesy” staff… mostly smartly dressed, although these don’t do light GA.
OTOH if a GA airfield charges £5 then on a nice weekend it will get totally overrun. I was recently at Popham (drove there) and someone told me they once got 600 microlights!
And UK PPL training is not good enough to enable untowered operations on a large scale.
With the way things are (often but not always) managed in the UK, light GA can easily artificially cause capacity to be reached.
Examples:
- over-officious FISOs and A/G operators increasing the amount of R/T going back and forth such that you do not need many aircraft on frequency (whether inbound, outbound, in the circuit or on the ground) before aircraft are having to go around because they cannot get their ‘final’ call in
- requiring PPR telephone calls – someone has to take these and note details down and get them to the tower
- illogical parking arrangements which are probably set up to give priority to some operator rather than make the best use of space (this also increases R/T, because instead of just ‘taxi to parking’ you get all sorts of back and forth about where they want you)
- over-cautious FISOs who won’t let departing aircraft slot into gaps in the arrivals.
have someone take the PPR call / process the PPR email / hand over the booking in/out Information to ATC
Completely unnecessary
allocate some parking space to them, and possibly have someone wave the aircraft in to the parking position
ATC / A/G says where to park. Takes 5 seconds.
take details from the pilot/aircraft, for invoicing purposes
print the invoice, take the money
Completely unnecessary. All that is required is what is required to figure out the landing fee, and operating the credit card machine to take payment; perhaps write out a receipt.
Seriously – petrol stations manage “invoicing” individual customers between 20 and 60 pound per transaction, AND they have to pay for fuel from that!
This s a fantastic example of the difference between a “can do” and “can’t do” attitude. One of the two comes up with lists like this. Guess which one.
boscomantico wrote:
Of course, you could argue that These guys have to be there anyway, waiting for the next bizjet to come, but that not how economics and staff planning work.
I would argue that if your staff complain about actually being required to work while you’re paying them, rather than sitting around on their backsides waiting for the next exciting bizjet, then you have some fairly fundamental management problems going on.
Unless you are paying them on a per-aircraft-handled basis then they are fixed costs as Peter says.
