Peter_G wrote:
I hope someone might be able to do the equivalent – including especially ‘start-up’ costs and hidden problems – for RNP (RNAV) approaches.
I think its already listed above – around £20K per runway threshold. After you have done the right obstacle survey and don’t need low RVR (and therefore no lighting is need) and no public transport (therefore no PAPI is needed, which allegedly costs around £50K per threshold), then that is all – £20K per threshold.
Amazing
I’m also shocked to see an NDB costs 100K. Virtually every other UK airfield seemed to have one back in the day and I would be hard pressed to see how they would have every been to afford those prices.
Bembridge 276
Bourn 392
Sywell 378.5
Compton Abbas (can anyone remember)
Barton (memory going there to)
Could they predate privitization of aviation? Installed by Ministry of Aviation?
I reckon they bought them cheap – a few k. There is a lot of old stuff kicking around this business. Not long ago there was a complete Thales ILS on Ebay for a few tens of k, IIRC. I found the post but the listing is gone. And an airfield like Bembridge, no commercial traffic, could use old gear, with some paperwork to keep the CAA happy. Welshpool had/has a DME too.
I am informed that if an ILS is unmonitored for a certain time it needs a new flight calibration. I think some airports (like Lydd) who shut theirs during their CV19 closures got a bit of a shock.
To my best knowledge, ground-based precision Navaids have to be flight-checked and calibrated every six months anyway, so probably they would have had the cost anyway.
I have no clue what a single check& calibration flight costs, but I know for sure that it involves quite a few flight hours of a King Air or Lear, plus the personnel on the ground.
And that’s coming up twice a year for each approach… I can imagine that being a major showstopper for smaller airfields contemplating an ILS.
CharlieRomeo wrote:
I can imagine that being a major showstopper for smaller airfields contemplating an ILS.
Absolutely, for smaller airfields it makes much more sense to have an LPV/LNAV approach developed. As a foreigner it looks like this has actually happened in France, where there are a lot of RNAV approaches to medium sized airfields that don’t look like they would get commercial traffic. But the UK seems to be the opposite example where RNAV is rare for that kind of airport, no idea why?
Emir wrote:
Today I flew new VOR approach to Losinj LDLO (VOR to RW02).
Having been to Losinj many times I looked at the approach charts many times and never needed them. In the end I realized that we only plan flights to this great place in serious VFR weather or we will plan some other destination.
Emir wrote:
why would anyone install so expensive device
The way I did experience operations at Croatian airports I doubt anybody is seriously considering cost anyway. It is great so many nice people to meet and talk to but from an economic point of view it must be horrible.
But the UK seems to be the opposite example where RNAV is rare for that kind of airport, no idea why?
The UK is unlikely to be doing LPV anytime soon, since Brussels has withdrawn the safety of life certification (that’s a joke, surely?) from the UK, post-brexit. The signal is still there but the paper authorisation isn’t 
Also GPS approaches aren’t free. Various previous threads – example – but you have to pay some company c. 30k per runway end to design one, and the airport (unless subsidised by the local chamber of commerce, etc) has to look at whether 30k/60k is viable for extra traffic generated.
And in the UK we still have “mandatory ATC” for an approach, with any exceptions being practically useless like having a limit of 6 flights per day.
The way I did experience operations at Croatian airports I doubt anybody is seriously considering cost anyway
One way to look at this is to ask whether an airport is desirable in case of a national emergency. For example it is widely believed that Cherbourg (which is otherwise dead, and is even more dead since they put in the stupid previous day’s PNR requirement which killed off most UK traffic which was probably the majority of their movements) is maintained purely for that reason; there is a nuclear facility nearby. If I was running Croatia I would certainly keep all their airports open, and if they make ends meet from GA income, that’s even better.
Peter wrote:
since Brussels has withdrawn the safety of life certification (that’s a joke, surely?) from the UK, post-brexit.
That’s one way of putting it. The Safety Of Life service was part of the “EU package” so of cause it was “withdrawn” just like everything else pertaining to the EU was “withdrawn”. The UK chose to leave.
Discussions about a new SoL agreement failed for whatever reason. Some say it was because the EU demanded an unreasonable price, other say that the UK on principle wouldn’t accept the European Court of Justice as arbiter for an agreement. Take your pick…
Or the UK could have decided to permit LPV operations without the SoL service.
