Plenty of great points here. Thank you Timothy.
Yes airports make more money with 1 jet than with 20 GA. That’s also the case in the US, and there the airport manager, who doesn’t have an MBA either, is smart enough to get things friendly and efficient.
I think the key to making a profit from GA is to operate as unmanned as possible. That’s how it works in the US and that is the way to go I guess.
I think airport managers like BA also because it mainly works on weekdays (when he manager works), and tells before coming (which is reassuring to him too).
As another data point, a pilot I know talked to one of the managers of Deauville LFRG and he said he doesn’t want a PCL because :
- they don’t want to come up one morning with a crashed plane on the runway
- planes could come and do patterns without saying their registration on the freq not to pay the fees
because Biggin has an ILS
….though this is a bit of an overstated benefit as the DA is 730’ AAL Fairoaks, and they are often in fog.
[Farnborough] also have a tight planning permission limit however
The council granted a decision to increase the number of movements to 50,000pa by 2019. Today it is about 55% utilised.
Over 22,000 movements per annum remain unfilled, but their £624 minimum landing fee never dropped and only rose with inflation.
There are only two airports in the UK: Gatwick and Heathrow, that are operating close to, or at planning permission capacity.
Several others have plenty of availability, but continue to use the “we’re very busy here” phrase to keep their fees high and runway unused.
Interesting.
These people are presumably recovering their costs from existing traffic and don’t want to do any more work to get more money. Given they are private companies I don’t see any way to tackle this.
They could keep “problematic GA” away by charging say £50 and they would still get nice easy money – because the London area is poorly served, especially in the evenings. Both Southend and Biggin make a large surcharge – of the order of £200 – for late movements.
Jujupilote wrote:
As another data point, a pilot I know talked to one of the managers of Deauville LFRG and he said he doesn’t want a PCL because :
- they don’t want to come up one morning with a crashed plane on the runway
- planes could come and do patterns without saying their registration on the freq not to pay the fees
That is a prime example of looking for problems rather than solutions.
The first is essentially an argument against any out-of-hours or unattended operations anywhere, day or night.
The second is paranoid. It’s unlikely to be an issue, and if it becomes one then find a way to deal with it – make Mode S mandatory at night or something.
Isn’t the actual business plan of any beneficial owner of airport land in the UK to get planning permission for houses? (Now, or in the future).Even the ‘hope value’ in land has significant value.
Anything to be made out of an airport business in the meantime is chicken feed compared with that. And running an airport efficiently so that it generates lots of trade, and employment, is likely to be counter productive as in the case of Wellesbourne. Much better to employ some MBA’s and yellow jacket thugs to drive business away! After all, if you can expunge aviation and remove the umbrella of Police protection that surrounds an active airfield the Travellers will move in next bank holiday. Soon the locals will be clamouring for the land to be developed!
The high cost of capital in UK is a direct result of relentless house price escalation, making actual productive business a poor second in investment decisions. Especially if you own 40 acres of ‘brownfield’ land near a motorway.
the
PikeysTravellers
is as acceptable and funny as “ niggers people of colour”
Peter wrote:
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)
That may be true but I think what Bosmantico is saying is that there are variable costs associated with every movement. It is an over simplification to say there are absolutely no costs in accepting the £10 landing fee from a Cherokee.
Edited Timothy. Didn’t mean to cause offence.
Neil wrote:
That may be true but I think what Bosmantico is saying is that there are variable costs associated with every movement. It is an over simplification to say there are absolutely no costs in accepting the £10 landing fee from a Cherokee.
I think the suggestion is that by setting your enterprise up in a more relaxed and customer-friendly fashion the marginal cost of accepting a Cherokee’s £10 landing fee can be reduced to very nearly nothing.
It is when you get delusions of grandeur and implement excess procedure/staff/security/admin that the costs are incurred. The Cherokee pilot doesn’t want a nicely-printed invoice with his credit card slip stapled to it, and he doesn’t want to stand at a reception desk while one man generates the invoice and another watches. He doesn’t want to be escorted to and from his plane, he doesn’t need to be marshalled, and he doesn’t want to phone ahead to give his details. He can taxi to self-service pumps rather than have a bowser come to him. It is these things that incur the costs, not the simple fact that he has landed and later today/tomorrow will take off again.
