Exactly. But most of the mentioned tasks/actions are a fact of life of UK airports (think Gloucester giving a „quality brief“ by telephone to all visitors beforehand…). Hence, they can‘t make any money on 30 pound landing fees, let alone on 10 pound landing fees.
And one thing. Not too few pilots DO require an invoice for airport fees, not just a receipt.
I’m not sure if you’re suggesting that these people who will need to take payment, marshall, and take ppr over the phone are all additional people that need to be employed to accept GA over and above who would normally be present?
That is indeed the core of the question. Certainly a matter of opinion. And setup. But it would be wrong to say that these things can be done by people sitting around anyways, doing nothing, and that the additional movement therefore costs no money at all. Because if they really were doing nothing, they wouldn’t be employed there (at least if were are talking places NORTH of the Alps…)
boscomantico wrote:
Exactly. But most of the mentioned tasks/actions are a fact of life of UK airports (think Gloucester giving a „quality brief“ by telephone to all visitors beforehand…). Hence, they can‘t make any money on 30 pound landing fees, let alone on 10 pound landing fees.And one thing. Not too few pilots DO require an invoice for airport fees, not just a receipt.
They are not necessarily facts of life, more facts of the way people choose to run airports in the UK. It doesn’t have to be like that, and I have no interest whatsoever in a ‘quality brief’ from Gloucester.
The invoice issue is easily solved. You leave a two-column many-row piece of paper on a clipboard on the counter with a sign next to it that says “Want an invoice? Write down your email address and aircraft registration here.” At the end of the day someone bangs the email addresses into the system and it fires out invoices automatically.
Or even if you think you must do it then and now with a person at a desk, you sort out your systems and procedures so that each invoice does not involve five mins of typing in details, navigating software menus and fiddling with reluctant printers. It is the same in hotels – you go to check out and they fiddle with the computer for several minutes before your invoice comes out. What can they really be doing? Surely your spend is logged and totalled as it happens, and printing the invoice should be a matter of entering the room number and pressing ‘print invoice’. It should take 5 seconds.
A GA airport, at the fundamental heart of it, is effectively a pay and display car park with an attached petrol station, an enterprise that can be run effectively by 0 persons present. (I’ve turned up at Asda in Heysham to put petrol in the car on my way to the overnight ferry to the Isle of Man, and there’s not a single person in attendance). At the heart of it, it during the busy periods it needs maybe two people to run, and out of hours, nobody. The proof of this was the airfield I learned to fly at in the US. As mentioned, it was privately owned and turned a profit with no government subsidy. It worked just fine.
Imagine the ridicule this country would get if you had to strictly PPR by telephone to go and use a pay & display car park or a petrol station.
the Pikeys Travellers
In everyday English conversation, “pikeys” is about 1/10 as “unacceptable” as “niggers” 
I work near a petrol station which has a shop and they get “pikeys” turn up in large groups and basically raid the shop. All on video but the police are not interested, of course…
Because if they really were doing nothing, they wouldn’t be employed there
Usually they are deployed to multiple tasks. For example the fire crew double up to move aircraft in and out of hangars, staff the pumps, cut the grass, etc. If they were not doing these duties they would still have to sit around to provide the CAA-mandated level of fire cover. Same goes for ATC which is a huge fixed cost which pretty well dominates the airport’s outgoings.
On the main topic I am sure there are multiple angles. For example some airports are genuinely up against the planning permission movements, so they don’t want to let in low-revenue traffic. And some PPR is CAA-mandated e.g. the old Shoreham limit (imposed by the CAA, apparently because they had Shoreham in their gunsight after the Hunter crash) of 6 movements per hour under A/G Radio had to be PPR-mandated. And some airports get really big problems with poor piloting and poor radio; I would suggest these are the places that do really cheap “all day breakfast” which is a really popular dish with the UK GA community, but there will be others. I had some awful experiences at Stapleford some years ago (often planes with an instructor in the RHS) and decided to never go there again. But in general most costs are fixed costs when you look at the people actually doing the various tasks, and which tasks they could be deployed to if they had more time.
The invoice issue is easily solved. You leave a two-column many-row piece of paper on a clipboard on the counter with a sign next to it that says “Want an invoice? Write down your email address and aircraft registration here.” At the end of the day someone bangs the email addresses into the system and it fires out invoices automatically.
That’s too obvious The problem is that there will be a few pilots who won’t pay. Just because you got a PPL doesn’t mean that you are “nice” and doesn’t mean that you are honest. This is like any other business; you get a % of bad debts. But airports don’t want to accept this – even if it is just say 1%. All the time this non-acceptance continues, we will never have unmanned runways.
boscomantico wrote:
Because if they really were doing nothing, they wouldn’t be employed there
I think it’s a case of whether they are being utilised all the time. I would argue a great deal of reception / etc are not busy all of the time and certainly this seems to be the case at my home airfield. A simple ppr call and note to the tower takes perhaps 3 minutes tops?
I’m not sure a great quality briefing should be required for a pilot to visit an airfield. A thorough read of any notes on the website or plates should suffice. The whole ppr for a fully operational airfield does seem a bit silly too unless it’s got other issues as previously mentioned such as being close to movement limits.
I think as mentioned for light GA many would be very happy with the self service style model. I would like to believe most would be honest and pay.
I occasionally drop into Breighton which operates on a similar basis and have had to divert in there for weather without ppr. It has been no problem and I was just able to leave my landing fee in the drop tank.
Off_Field wrote:
I think as mentioned for light GA many would be very happy with the self service style model. I would like to believe most would be honest and pay.At EKRN the GA parking is on the side, nearest the exit. Handling is via your own two feet, exit is through two one way doors (to create a lock). To leave, you go to the C office, there is a computer to enter your informations and a card reader to pay your dues, a printer gives you the invoice when the payment in approved. To re-enter, you ring a bell at the one way door, show the invoice + credit card receipt to a webcam to the tower people, who can see all is in order and then unlock the door, and you can self-handle back to your plane.
That’s excellent Arne, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. It is possible if people have the right attitude to making things happen.
It‘s a regulatory and cultural thing though. Denmark and the UK are lightyears apart in this regard. Just as Germany will NEVER get rid of the Flugleiter, the UK will never get rid of PPR, „booking“, H&S and other such BS. We are not the CAA, not the UK cultural board, and not the comittee of airport operators. We are just a few pilots, with no handle on these things, so exchanging warm ideas here about the perfect world do exactly nothing. Thus I WOULD say that these artificial complications ARE a fact of life of flying in the UK.
