So yes, “Flugplatzzwang” and “Flugleiterpflicht” in Germany and Austria were introduced by the. Nazi regime, and kept when the national laws were redrafted after the war.
Thanks for clarifying!!! Learned something today.
arj1 wrote:
Or maybe pilots just don’t believe that anything would change? :)
Or even more so there are plenty of 100$ burger pilots out there who actually are quite ok with having a person responsible for the running of the airfield always there when it’s open? Lots of Germans (and some other nationalities as well) are quite happy with the fact that they get people who check and do oversight all over the place. If they enjoy having an “Ordnungsamt” which checks that nobody steps out of line in each villages (I once heard that this also goes back to the Nazi term “Blockwart”) and get off on watching TV shows “Achtung Kontrolle” showing how people get checked all over the place by customs, police, OA, and whoeverelse can do that), who wonders why it doesn’t change?
Sure there are people who want to change it, but whether they really are in the majority? I recall many years ago how a German pilot at a Swiss small airfield was totally shocked and miffed that there was nobody there to “take care of things” and he was expected to fill in a form to pay his landing fee rather than having a friendly Luftaufsicht to do that job for him…
Maybe it’s simply a local thing and we can be glad that Germany does not (yet) have enough clout to make EASA think it’s needed everywhere.
Yes – possible – but a mandatory person, who is presumably paid, dramatically increases the fixed cost of an airfield.
For 1 person’s salary you can do a huge amount of maintenance by an outside contractor.
How much is a flugleiter paid, generally?
@Peter my impression from a limited amount of flying in Germany is that Fluglieiters are somebody who for the most part would be there anyway maintaining the facility and selling services. The concept of an airport being a strip of tarmac on which pilots can choose to land (versus a ground centered private business being run by people) is not a very European concept regardless.
Perhaps somebody more diligent and interested than me will dig through this 1940 paper entitled German Air Law – A Case History and learn something relevant. Fifty-one pages of scholarly rigor 
Fluglieiters are somebody who for the most part be there anyway.
That may be but it’s like the French GA airfields which get local taxpayer funding. It is fine while the money is coming in and while the beancounters are safely sleeping.
Any substantial fixed cost just accelerates the airfield’s demise. And nobody will see this coming until it comes.
You have to take a lot of landing fees, or sell a lot of fuel at ~€0.30/litre margin, or whatever, to cover 1 person’s salary.
That looks like fun reading German_Air_Law_A_Case_History_pdf
How much is a flugleiter paid, generally?
Depends. At some airfields it is a paid job (no clue about the wages, though). At others, like EDQN where I fly, each member of the association managing the field (aeroclub members, owners of aircraft based etc.) must contribute 2-3 days per year of flugleiter service. I’d expect some airfields have a voluntary basis.
I have to say, I quite like our model. I think it is fair. I also believe in the associative model (not only for running airfields!) and that members involvement is important.
Flugleiter service is only assured during weekends at EDQN. I hope that the new regulation will enable us to fly in or out of the field during the week (or after hours on weekends) without having to ask someone to come do flugleiter, as has been the case until now.
In most gliding airfields, it’s usually rota with members, so it’s offered for free…the problem, you have to be at airfield before he goes for beer after they ring the clubhouse bell
That model reminds me of certain sailing clubs around here.
Many years ago, and for many years, I used to windsurf, on the sea near EGKA, and was keeping half an eye out for certain lakes. The most interesting one was one called Weirwood, very close to Gatwick. The rights to sail there were (and AFAICT still are) owned by an extremely stuffy sailing club. No way to use their precious lake (actually owned by the water company, since it is a reservoir) unless one joined up and performed certain duties for x days a year, and if you failed say 3 times you got kicked out. Nevertheless, I tried to join that club, and the chief looked at me to see if I had certain visible parts of the female anatomy, and said “you don’t have big enough t**s”
The result of this “enforced participation” scheme was that basically all the people in the club had the same DNA, and a very uniform mental attitude. Once, Justine and I were picking blackberries along another part of the lake, not used by the club, and got intercepted by a Grade 10 arrogant woman saying “which part of ‘private’ do you not understand”? That phrase won’t translate well into other languages…
The likely end result is that, over many years, every member will have their nose firmly stuck up the back end of everybody else, starting with the Boss. Just like in a waterski club (I did that for many years too, until it lost the concession for the lakeshore) where if you didn’t stick your nose up the back end of the guy driving the boat, you didn’t get to ski much
Putting it another way, you get a club made up largely of people who have a lot of time at weekends and are heavily invested and thus don’t like “strange new people”, and is run by what in England we call a “little Hitler”. I have heard that phrase used in Germany for the Flugleiter many times. It is also widely used for FISOs here
When there is no Flugleiter anymore, who will tell the pilots if the airfield is open? Sounds silly but I fear that this will be the reason to still have one even if it’s not required anymore.
How does this work in countries where no one is required on the ground? Does this automatically mean that the airfield is open H24?
The problem in Germany is that the constraints for airfield opening hours are often political and not financial. But with limited opening hours and no one to enforce them someone will take off 1 minute after closing time. And that is a problem because it will ultimately threaten the existence of the airfield.
A website?
I started this thread on that.
But really a website (where the national CAA refuses to include the details in the AIP) is cheap.
