€15K a year … Those who can afford to do that need to realize that divide and conquer will eventually conquer them too.
That’s probably more than an average GA budget in Europe. E.g. it can cover insurance, yearly maintenance and fuel for one year flying DA42. The question is why would someone spend that money on lobbing when he/she can spend it on flying.
The question is why would someone spend that money on lobbing when he/she can spend it on flying.
Because they can, civic duty, to protect what is valuable and threatened. From my own POV someday whatever assets I have will need to find a new home, and I can’t think of better use for them. I will likely leave a large sum to AOPA in the US.
My flying and aircraft ownership cost around $1K a month, about half of which is the hangar rent, but I don’t see the two as being competitive.
The way divide and conquer government activism works is to push most people out of an activity by increasing costs with taxation and lack of attention to the infrastructure. Then when only a relatively small and rich group are left, push them out democratically and with envy, using the ‘better use of resources for more people’ excuse. Mission accomplished and the way to fight it is to fight it, not to expect that the system is fair and just without people looking after their legitimate interests, confronting those who in this case think the world would be better if everybody were forced to stay home, be quiet and have a miserable life.
Democracy is a participation sport, not the process of living under the dictates of those who think they know better, but generally don’t.
With that argument, you’d have to argue all those who drive their cars and bikes for fun don’t want to use public roads. So where would they drive?
This is becoming silly. Cars IS the default mode if transportation for most people. GA is not. If cars were not the default mode of transportation, the road infrastructure we have today would not exist. Likewise commercial air traffic is also a default mode of transportation.
UL in Europe is surprisingly equal all over. The reason is AERO, EAS, EMF, and others. There are no big quarrels there. When new regs are in place, all ULs can free freely into Norway also without asking for permission 
The airport status is how things becomes when organising traffic in a commercial environment. An infrastructure perfectly suited for commercial traffic. Works just fine for biz jets also.
Things are not black or white. Kjeller is soon gone for instance. There are talks/initial plans now for a third runway at Gardermoen, suitable for GA and smaller CAT. The same plans exists for ENVA. They have a similar concept at Copenhagen. It’s not entirely clear to me what this will solve, but it certainly is an improvement, at least in theory.
One thing not to forget, and which partly explains airports (not talking about aerodromes or fields) trying to push out GA, is that CAT is considered as public transportation.
As an example, my region is subject to notorious traffic jams. The authorities have now set up a traffic light system, thereby freeing lanes for the public transportation (buses) during peak hours.
Which of course creates even more traffic jams, but that ain’t the point
It’s not entirely clear to me what this will solve, but it certainly is an improvement, at least in theory
Lot of regional airports down here usually have two runways one instrument for international CAT & GA Bizjet and small parallel or perpendicular runway for domestic light GA and ULM (usually grass that ATC close anytime it rains, anytime I receive the NOTAMS notification, I know it rained), the two usually have different gates and “terminals” with a wall between them
Operation on grass is “cheap” (or even “free”), if someone flies light GA IFR and they are really tight budget then ILS to main runway followed by circle to land on adjacent grass and 7 days parking on grass is free as well
€15K a year
That is certainly more than a typical renter budget (although I have known SR22 renters who were easily spending 20k/year and inexplicably felt they were getting good value) but is not an unusual owner budget for someone doing 50-150hrs/year. And unless they are getting shafted by some maintenance company, most of it will be avgas.
But… loads and loads of people are leasing cars for 1k/month!
Lobbying in Europe is hard. Everything is pretty well stitched up here. Everywhere you look, somebody is trying to make money off somebody else by pushing some regulatory proposal. First two threads here describe where somebody tried, and even there, reportedly, some sections of GA thought this was a bad idea, notably PPL/IR Europe, where a view was expressed that this might cause airports (those which tolerate GA) to simply push out GA totally. Airport management here in Europe is so truly stupid that any outcome is possible.
There is also the argument that lobbying should not be easy, because basically lobbying = bribery. The EU is pretty well set up to make lobbying hard, for this reason. Whether it works, is a matter of opinion. A competent lobbyist can make a good case for why some measure is ill-conceived, in a situation where the regulators (who are 99% an unelected, unaccountable, self-appointed and self-massaging load of people, generally too young to have much experience, and constrained by the “EU=closed club” requirement) are pushing something for environment-political-liberal reasons. I could give examples in e.g. the ROHS sphere where substances were banned at an absolutely massive cost to industry (and to consumer, as a result); you can dig around the famous Swatch case – example.
AOPA US, in contrast, not only has the $$$ (because US GA pulls in the same direction) but also is able to lobby effectively.
although I have known SR22 renters who were easily spending 20k/year and inexplicably felt they were getting good value
One of my friends used to pay 30k£ per year renting one (80h-100h per year), it was like “his aircraft” even had the handler who fuel it and clean it for him, while he flew it all over the place, his argument was 4% interest only on 1m£ is 40k£ per year, so he was getting a good deal renting it…the “actual owner” did not care much about flying it, it was merely one of his company means of transports (he has 40m size boat at StTropez for his transport as well)
Ownership in private aircraft within 1m£-5m£ brackets won’t survive economics at high interest rates (unless they are flown 500h per year, the same for many of those shinny 300k$ ULM and 1k$/month cars)
He was prob99 in finance…
The sales of the 200k+ ULs are miniscule – quite unlike the impression one might get walking around Aero Friedrichshafen. And, obviously anecdotally because hard data will be hard to get, their annual hours are also miniscule; they are bought as toys.
The real UL activity is a lot further down the price scale; predictably since if you pay 200k+ where are you saving money??
There is also the argument that lobbying should not be easy, because basically lobbying = bribery
Huh? That’s corruption. You can go to jail for that. Some do 
Lobbying in my world is paying lobbyist salaries and other costs to present the positions of those paying them. People organize for a reasons other than having tea together and combining assets to get their common position heard is a good reason to do so. Same thing for companies and industries that employ many people productively and underpin society in doing so.
Lobbying is part of the legislative process conducted by elected politicians who are paid by the taxpayer to listen and act on what they learn about often conflicting priorities, interests and groups. Most elected officials otherwise have little subject matter background from which to draw – they are typically just lawyers.
gallois wrote:
Why on earth would I want to swap that for yellow vests, security gates, training to get a CIME card in order to escort my passengers to the plane, opening hours, handling agents etc etc which all goes with infrastructure rather than sports and leisure.
That is definitly NOT what the intention would be at all! No way.
Infrastructure just means: You can’t deny people access, you can’t hassle people out of it and you can’t shut them down at will or at a whim.
No public road is different just because it’s infrastructure. All this status does is, well, see above. A bicycle trail which is part of infrastructure will be maintained and kept up as all public roads are. And, as all public roads, it is open to anyone which has a suitable vehicle to use it. You don’t need any of that to access a public place which is infrastructure, so why doing that for airfields?
To make sure that airports are regarded as general public access infrastrucure means, they can not kick out GA, they can not do tricks like asking PPR without a darn good reason and they can’t outprice anyone because pricing is set by the infrastructure regulation.
Airfields which get infrastructure status will have to do the same, basically, they can’t keep people out, can’t outprice them, can’t say sorry, no access. In return, they are protected from exploitation as just about normal pieces of land, which can be sold, redevelopped at a whim and be gone for good.
It does not change any safety or security issues, it does not change the way they are operated, it only changes their accessability and their reason of being.
It is quite “funny” to see the reaction even here to the very suggestion. They are not unlike what you see from politicians, even though for totally different reasons.
P.S.
Yes, I know about your motorways and the italian ones. Also this actually is a problem, as it does outprice some of the people on a national road network. What we have, and some others, are yearly paid “vignettes” (cost for Switzerland CHF 40.-) which allows you to use all motorways. However, those who have toll roads know it works after a fashion, even if it does outprice some people. So what is the difference? First of all, their licensing to get fees for the use of a national highway would prohibit them from denying anyone access and from levyying prohibitive fees, which I understand, must be approved by your ministry of transport. The other reason why this does not turn into Commercial vehicles only is pretty easy: 100’000 cars paying one Euro each are still a quantity no commercial enterprise will want to forego. Otherwise, you bet the motorway system would try to get rid of personal cars and be open only to trucks which pay a much larger fee. That is exactly what airports do: They outprice and hassle small GA because they wish them gone. Those are not “usage fees” but prohibitive fees. And that, imho is abuse of a monopoly, particularly where no alternative airports and airfields exist.
