Flugleiter in Germany - pointless?

Anyway if you need a fire truck on landing you can ask for it, 20nm away, I had 3 landings at an uncontrolled airfield where I asked to have the fire truck at the runway end on my landing (“the red vehicule” on RT not to scare myself & pax), one was technical problem with gear, two others were landing attempts in challenging conditions, all turn out to be non-event but I would have diverted in answer was NO or fire truck was not available on those occasions but would land without when it’s business as usual

Maoraigh wrote:

No one there, no QFE, wind from windsock.

Like about half of the airports I use every month, except sometimes ASOS, which can be helpful. Nobody knows I’m coming, nobody knows I’ve been.

“Nobody knows I´m coming, nobody knows I´ve been there.” Really nice ! So obviously no landing fee paid. Yeah, some stupid volunteers maintain the place in their pastime and clubs take all costs – or the taxpayer does for my hobby. I myself am my priority – don´t care for the rest – don´t care who pays whatever I get from the country. Seems the flugleiter appears as kind of air police installed by big government ??? Not so, 95 percent are pilots like most here, doing a service for the club and visitors at next to zero money. Only bigger airfields with IFR/ business traffic got flugleiters (pilots too) full paid by the town/county but again no air police by definition and no ATC as no radar facilities there when no airliners handled. So full time jobs will have to be financed certainly in those biger airfields but then there is some work for the money to be done. Same as in other public services and a few pilots(flugleiters) can live from these jobs. Asking for a fire truck – how to do when nobody on the airfield with public phone number ?? Except for big cities fire trucks are run by voluntary unpaid local teams that you´d have to collect for special landings and will possibly ask for compensation when no real emergency case was expected. They would be unwilling to be present several times per year for private ops so typically there is a small truck at the airfield owned by the operator, no public expenses here. Referring to the opening matter I´d think to start a discussion about : PPR – pointless ???

This is luckily not often found in my country , I would not be willing to undergo this sh** when I can help it by rather flying elsewhere. Freedom of flight and flexibility don´t go together with PPR in my eyes ,give me 10 flugleiters instead any day. Opening hours are not a silly idea of the concierge on the mic but a deal between the operator of the airfield, club or town, and the towns nearby for preventing wars with inhabitants due to aircraft noise in early or late hours – or around midday, Switzerland may be more critical of this, don´t know. I am not so sure pilots will keep this in mind when nobody is on the place – there are characters of pilots . . . .. No question about this when the airfield is in the middle of nowhere but we are talking about Germany mainly so, no , will not work without somebody having an eye for to keep the airfields active for some more times. A few years ago a B 25 bomber from Red Bull did a low pass and a nice roll over the place in EDME, 5 minutes later someone from next town was up the tower asking for police action but the tower man told him, sorry don´t know them and could not get the registration . So this was settled luckily but you don´t need some more incidents like this for risking a shutting down the place. The dreaded flugleiter/concierge is nothing negative to me,can be useful in various ways and most times nice to have a chat when paying a modest fee for services. He is not the Gestapo but your fellow pilot trying to be helpful. And whenever we´d like to fly from Bavaria near Austria to the Baltic Sea /Poland VFR, no need to talk to anyone on the ground, no PPR , just call an airfield you´d like to land and you get the OK within operating hours. Big chance to get the OK for landing even after operating hours , not by PPR but from first in flight radio contact to the flugleiter.

Vic

I don’t mind that you like your fire cover, feel free to arrange for it yourself everywhere you fly. Feel free to notify every fire service enroute, too, just in case. As for having a place for neighbours to come to to make complaints – not so sure about that. And a job creation scheme? Seriously?

Unfortunately, aviation is full of little bureaucrats imposing unnecessary rules on us (Flugleiters in Germany, PPR in the UK, flight plans for international flights, ratings for going to the loo with variants for standing and sitting down, etc.),

It is also equally full of people whose reaction to these rules is best described as a mild case of Stockholm syndrome.

Most airports in Canada are unattended all the time. 95 percent are open 24 hours a day, no PPR or landing fees. Perhaps a nominal parking fee if you stay overnight ($5), which might be waived if you fuel up.

Works just fine. It is similar to other well known infrastructure (Roads). Flying is like getting in your car and driving somewhere!

Now that I live in the UK, I have ‘adjusted’. Stockholm syndrome indeed.

It was not me coming up with wanting to have a fire truck before landing, Ibra told his story. Scratching my head how one would call the fire truck at an unattended airfield ? Again, different countries got different conditions for reasons. In vast countries like US and Canada flying is a lot more important for transport, so some reason for having airfields supported by taxpayers. Also noise matters not the least when next town is 10 miles away, you will not find many places here like that, so obviously some criteria not applicable there in contrast to EU. Job creation scheme, not too many , but fully paid flugleiters on bigger airfields run by town or county with IFR and business flights, customs handled there too. As mentioned, real transport flights from typical GA fields in EU for not taking car or train my guess maybe 20 percent, rest pure joy flights . So what percentage of all population in that country actually got any benefit from a GA airfield and why should Joe Public see his tax go into that pastime activity of the few ? Now try to argue with the operator, town and county , about getting public money into there instead of having it provide kindergartens, swimming pools, care homes . Vic

vic wrote:

Also noise matters not the least when next town is 10 miles away,

My base and many or possibly most of the airports I fly Into are in the town, in the middle, which is why the noise is less of an issue… it’s already loud with trucks and cars and who knows what else – at my base there’s a motorway on all four sides of the airport and dense buildings in all directions. We have around 600 based aircraft, several hundred operations a day of individuals flying for their own reasons, even more flight training, I believe four ambulance EC135 helicopters, the Sheriffs Dept. helicopter base and fire fighting operations center, a jet center for business travelers, three companies competing for the tax paying fuel business and so on… Everybody doing their own thing and not feeling any need to second guess every move, record who comes or goes or obsessively watch each other. If you arrive in your plane from elsewhere you taxi it to the transient ramp, tie it down, walk away and call an Uber to come get you on the curb. We also have a light rail station adjacent to the transient tie down area. In no case do you need to coordinate or talk to anybody in the ground unless you want to do so.

A bizarre discussion. Airports are a strip of asphalt a tiny fraction of the length of the adjacent road, that takes not a lot of maintenance and no people. If there are hangars and structures, the tenants pay to maintain them with rent money and somebody makes a living collecting rents and organizing the building maintenance. It’s nothing to do with airport operations, people concerned with the building and businesses don’t need to watch over anybody or know their plans. Neither does ATC, when and where it exists due to traffic volume, they just get the plane on the ground and off runway. At night they generally don’t need to be there and it makes no difference. People fly in, people fly out, nobody cares when they show up, why or how long they’re staying. Meanwhile other people in the area drive their cars whenever they want for whatever reason they want, people keep their boats at public docks, people ride around in mostly empty buses. This is called wealth, options, flexibility, the stuff most people like and enjoy. All of it a good thing, normal life that doesn’t need to create any angst.

In the end, the Flugleiter is much more about liability nowadays than anything else. It is the fire truck, it is the guy who checks the runway every morning and so on, so that in case of an accident you cannot blame the aero club.

Please distinguish more sharply in between opening hours and presence of Flugleiter on site. You can perfectly close an aerodrome due to noise abatement, say from 1200 to 1500 local time. and publish that in the AIP. This is unrelated with the presence of a Flugleiter.

If any infringement has to be gone after, then you can do that with a system of Webcams, (which would anyhow be nice, because you can use it for pre-filling the operations logbook).

But in the end, it won’t be necessary, because any aerodrome in Germany has at least one Blockwart in the neighbourhood who will happily protocol it any time.

vic wrote:

“Nobody knows I´m coming, nobody knows I´ve been there.” Really nice ! So obviously no landing fee paid.

Landing fees are the total exception in the US. At KSMO they are a city council-induced ploy to dissuade pilots from coming, nothing to do with the upkeep of the airport. Airfields are seen as infrastructure and are maintained by a mix of city/county/state budgets and FAA grants.

If German pilots would use only a fraction of the time they spend complaining about Flugleiter (and other legal) requirements for volunteering at their local airfield to act as Flugleiter, we would not have any issue at all.

Interestingly in my experience with the last airfield I’ve been flying at that has been operated by an aero club, there never has been a problem with Flugleiter requirement. If somebody wanted to fly “out of hours”, the next member that acted as Flugleiter was just one (sometimes two) calls away. No problem at all!
On the other hands my experiences with the most outspoken opposition against such regulations is at commercially run airfield where some pilots have an extreme form of “I deserve full service for free” mentality.