Getting value out of GA has always been a case of choosing your battles.
It’s a matter of whether the “manageable battles” are getting fewer.
I always thought France is a flying heaven – so long as you keep your head down when the aeroclub president is around, or operate outside that scene 
Peter wrote:
I always thought France is a flying heaven
I had the impression it’s Germany (short of being US), Germans will think it’s Sweden, people in Sweden think it’s UK, the grass is always greener nearby
In general I would still think that outpricing and PPR in S-Europe is the main problem. Both are rampant and both are a massive problem for anyone wishing to travel by GA.
If I see destinations which used to be very attractive for GA simply putting a stop to it by asking outrageous handling and landing fees and thereby outpricing us or come up with trumped up PPR clauses doing the same thing, then it is clear: We are not wanted there. However, it should not be the perogative of local authorities to allow public service airports to deny service, be it via PPR or outpricing or both, to any form of aviation just because they don’t like it. Almost none of the airports who do this have a rational reason behind it other than a pet peeve against light GA.
Croatia still has a good net of places to go to but looking at prices in Dubrovnik for instance is very disappointing. Greece’s Fraport airports have totally been lost to GA.
There are other examples like Bulgaria, where lots of small airports have sprung up in recent years and who is actively supporting their own GA, but who is still fighting with e.g. airport of entry requirements and the lack of these facilities at the GA airfields.
We shall have to see what happens if certain governments will fall in the near future and be replaced with anti aviation ones.In these cases, massive increases in fuel prices and legal obstacles may well result in a collapse of GA.
I agree that perception is often not quite what conditions really are but that is why we are talking to each other here. Yes the grass is always greener elsewhere, but seeing that even in the US today there are massive problems for many GA participants (particularly due to the behaviour of insurances over there) we maybe have to look at our own GA with a bit less negative feel and just about use it while it lasts.
Ibra wrote:
I had the impression it’s Germany (short of being US), Germans will think it’s Sweden, people in Sweden think it’s UK, the grass is always greener nearby
Heaven is to be able to fly between all of those, and more 
I can only speak about Spain, but the move away from ‘certified’ airplanes to ULMs had already started before the economic collapse of 2008. Actually, in southern Europe a ULM makes perfect sense. You rarely need IFR capabilities, there are many, many more airfields to choose from and at the upper end these airplanes are faster than most certified GA planes. There simply is no need to deal with all the hassle of certified ownership.
172driver wrote:
I can only speak about Spain, but the move away from ‘certified’ airplanes to ULMs had already started before the economic collapse of 2008. Actually, in southern Europe a ULM makes perfect sense. You rarely need IFR capabilities, there are many, many more airfields to choose from and at the upper end these airplanes are faster than most certified GA planes. There simply is no need to deal with all the hassle of certified ownership.
That makes sense.
PPL/IR Europe recently made an analysis of all European Airport METARs for the past few years to find out how much the restrictions of the forthcoming “Basic Instrument Rating” would affect dispatch compared to a regular IR. At the same time we got statistics for VFR weather.
It turned out that Italy and Spain on average have IFR conditions 7% of the time while the figure is 16% for Germany and the UK — and 24% for Sweden. (Guess why I got the IR.)
172driver wrote:
Actually, in southern Europe a ULM makes perfect sense.
Only if you don’t need more than 2 seats. I can see me touring in a TMG or micro light and visit all these small fields where a 172 can’t or must not (this is probably a German thing) land but for the next 15 years I need a four seater. Maybe this also tells us something of the demographics of the pilot communities in these countries.
It turned out that Italy and Spain on average have IFR conditions 7% of the time while the figure is 16% for Germany and the UK — and 24% for Sweden. (Guess why I got the IR.)
That’s not the whole picture though. It assumes that people don’t fly for any real purpose; only down the road for a beer or some such. Then, yeah, you get all the despatch rate you want, VFR-only. The people you are meeting up for a beer won’t be flying either, so nothing is lost. That scene is mostly short-range social stuff. Even more so if you operate below the radar which is, ahem, 95% of the point of UL Actually with the UK CAA busting pilots so enthusiastically for infringements, we are heading the same way here, but it has not [yet] collapsed into near-UL-only.
The majority of IR holders are pilots who are flying with some better defined objective. That’s why they went to the considerable hassle of getting the IR. They do long cross-countries, where you book hotels, meet up with others doing similar, etc. Nobody would do an IR for burger runs, no matter how often it is sub-VFR wx. And they tend to fly from “proper airports” (for numerous reasons to do with hangarage, fuel, IAPs, etc) which won’t allow a VFR departure in sub 1500ft cloudbase no matter how thin the layer is, and may report you if they see you doing something naughty on arrival.
If you look at who flies longer trips, very few are based in southern Europe. How many Greek pilots do you see in N Europe? Virtually zero. Even Croatia, which is just up the road, and arguably just as scenic, virtually zero. Well, no surprise; they have both superior food and superior climate I therefore suggest the main factor is not the wx but that the southern European GA scene is almost entirely social, and that is much easier on the despatch rate.
Also a 16% IFR rate doesn’t tell you anything about enroute wx. If I was 100% VFR, I would almost never cancel a departure, and very rarely an arrival. Mostly it is enroute wx which buggers up the plan. And enroute wx is a much bigger issue: a METAR is just around the airport whereas “enroute” is like 100 METARs along a line, so if there is a 16% probability of it being non-VFR at the airport, it will be ~100% along any length of a route. With the BIR you can’t fly SIDs/STARs, AIUI and that’s quite a distance.
Peter wrote:
Maybe @Nuccio has a closer view of what’s happening?
Sorry Peter, I cannot share a closer view of the situation here in Italy as I very rarely use GA airports simply beacuse I do not need them.
I have been flying an ULM for 25 year and my choice was dictated by low costs, simpler rules and lot of private airfields. I am still happy with that choice that has allowed me to fly abroad as well. Just a little bit of complication to explain to CAA’s what kind of animal is an ULM but at the end, getting the permissions has been part of the fun…
172driver wrote:
Actually, in southern Europe a ULM makes perfect sense. You rarely need IFR capabilities, there are many, many more airfields to choose from and at the upper end these airplanes are faster than most certified GA planes. There simply is no need to deal with all the hassle of certified ownership.
Actually, you define the problem in this very short paragraph. Us vs They. UL vs certified. IMHO this is a target by the anti GA lobby who wishes to eradicate GA step by step using the old Roman banter “divide and conquer”.
ULM’s are by definition 2 seater with limited range and only VFR. That is what many anti GA folks think is “tolerable”, mainly because it totally negates those who wish to really travel and it will ground a great lot of people due to family or weight restraints or both.
What has happened with ULM’s is that a parallel society has been formed, with few or no contacts to the world of ICAO aviation. Those flying there are blissfully unaware or simply ignore the constant increase of restriction and red tape their colleagues who have more interest than short range VFR aviation alone (most of those contraptions don’t even legally carry two) and with very limited access to airports.
The goal behind this is clear: With the division the anti GA lobby gets rid of a load of pilots who take the currently “easier” way and fly ULMs. They also rid themselfs of unwanted traffic on their larger airports and have more and more reason to proclaim that certified GA is a privilege so few ultra rich class enemies use and therefore something best eliminated, as it does not serve the general population.
Only what do you imagine will happen, once certified GA is dead? ULM’s to be left alone? I think that is naive to the max. Noise groups and other anti GA folks will not simply stop and go away, they will then attack ULMs with gusto and have plenty of arguments for elimination: most of ULM’s are never or very rarely flown legally for weight reasons alone, their accident rates is not exactly stellar and they make the same or even more agressive noise than their certified relatives.So let’s get rid of them too.
IMHO, this division and the fact that most ULM airfields are strictly ULM and denied access to certified airplanes, with often better performance, is fatal for GA. ULM’s should not be treated differently at all, rather certified traffic should be cut the same slack (at least NCO). The division between ULM and certified does not help the general direction GA is going, it is clearly a means to an end. And aviation should not be stupid enough to accept that.
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