GA activity and its decline

You could buy a Jetprop I can’t think of a greater financial punishment than an old turboprop

JP offers best bang for the buck. Ok, even older used ones are now around 1+m EUR, but ownership cost vs. capability is unchallenged.

Clipperstorch wrote:

My club (and so have many others) even has a plane suited for longer trips but most of the time it stands its tyres flat in the hangar.

This is what you see with quite a few such travel planes in the clubs. Quite a few clubs I know threw away their travellers (or sold them to a group within the club who then use it as a pure traveller outside the club’s finances) and got some more PA28/172 type planes, because they can rent those.

Also in many clubs if a travel machine does not bring the hours it needs to cover the costs, a deadly spiral starts to develop, in as so far that rental price is RAISED to cover costs with the existing hours rather than either kept or lowered. The consequence always is the same: The few hours the traveller did do evaporate and 2 years later latest the airplane is sold off. On the other hand, a club I know who operates a PARO which was low on hours radically lowered the price to just break even, going massively below the “going rate” for an Arrow and much closer to the Archer prices and in addition made information evenings for perspective Arrow Pilots calculating out for them that even the Arrow was more expensive to rent it was actually cheaper on the trip because it has better range and speed. They still happily have that plane.

Maybe to say the clubs do not encourage longer trips is not the right interpretation of what really is going on, even though there are clearly clubs where this does happen. But the main bit is that the rental conditions vs the “risk” of being home late with all the financial consequences simply do not really offer itself for longer trips.

IMHO, the best way to operate airplanes like Arrows, Mooneys, TB20 and so on is really as private airplanes under private ownership or in syndicates of a few pilots which will not step on each others feet and leave ample availability. Clubs should cater to the 172/PA28 crowd as well as focus on training, with travelling done under ownership.

Silvaire wrote:

If I understand correctly, European GA travel regulation wasn’t a lot different in the past, on paper and if you forget the intraschengen CV-19 travel idiocy that is hopefully gone for good. However advancements in communication and IT today have allowed governments to obsessively pile on enforcement of process to the point where to most people it’s just a bit silly to get involved. Flying places is supposed to enjoyable, not a surrogate job for those who aren’t already fully occupied.

It was different that in the past you had access to almost all larger airports which have now priced out GA without decent alternatives, it was different that in the old days there was almost no PPR requirements for customs and so on.

If you fly intra Schengen now, freedom to fly is much bigger than it ever was (with the exception of places where customs is still needed such as Switzerland and Greece). The problematic places are those who are outpricing or outregulating their best GA places and who otherwise discourage GA, but generally, you should be able to still do quite a lot of travelling without that hassle.

The discussions we are having here at EuroGA about red tape and places becoming unavailable stem from the fact that travel for Brits indeed has become much more cumbersome following Brexit and that some of the favorite destinations (Croatia) have become unavailable due to outpricing and slottery. Brits (and Swiss regarding customs) are restricted by the requirement of AoE’s to enter and leave Schengen and the EU, however, that does not change anything in the fact that e.g. out of Germany you can fly the whole Schengen Area, small airport to airport, in freedom previously unknown. Also, what most of us here are doing or want to be doing, i.e “long haul” GA, is not anything close to the normal profile of GA users.

Maybe those of us who see their destinations being abused into rubbish need to refocus and go where they are welcome. I’ve seen several whose flying have changed massively but it still worthwile and enjoyable.

I am currently looking how to get my SEP back and to restart my flying, looking at different options and places to go to, now that e.g. most of Croatia has gone down the drain. But there is still a lot to see around here, such as lovely places in Germany and Austria which are widely accessible, such as France and even some places in Italy which are still wide open to GA (Venice, Albenga, both around 2 hours from home). I guess we need to be flexible and take what we can.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

out of Germany you can fly the whole Schengen Area, small airport to airport, in freedom previously unknown.

Interesting perspective

Flying from Innsbruck to Zell am See in a Mooney last month was more nonsense that I would put up with, in one country for a trip of what, 50 miles? I started to get the message when Innsbruck Tower forbade an intersection takeoff with 1500 meters available, due to their understanding of turbulence on the upwind. The pilot’s decision making? Not important.

In order for GA travel not to decline when other options for travel have actually become easier in Europe, VFR at least needs to be like a car – no flight plan, no PPR, no overcomplex airspace, no operating hours, ideally no radio communication, no nothing. That may be true for limited cross border destinations to/from Germany, but it is not the relatively unattractive norm.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

But the main bit is that the rental conditions vs the “risk” of being home late with all the financial consequences simply do not really offer itself for longer trips.

I don’t know how this is usually done, even in Sweden, but in my club we have no penalties if an aircraft is late. This is both intended to encourage travel and to minimise the chance of risk taking on the part of the pilot. In an AOG situation, the club will assume all costs and trouble for bringing the aircraft home. It is such a very unusual situation that it is worth the risk, also this is typically not the pilot’s fault. Again, this is to encourage travel.

The club I rented from post-PPL was the same. Trips encouraged, and much made of the rules designed to promote safe decision make – no late penalties, etc.

But the somewhat patronising attitude that pervaded everything made it crystal clear that if you ever failed to return on schedule or required any sort of bailing out then it would be taken as a sign that you ought to stick to local and familiar destinations.

Apart from anything else, renting costs twice per hour what the average group aircraft costs per hour.

Anyone who expects to be flying quite a bit (and can afford it) gets into a group because then X hours per year cost approximately half as much, with much better aircraft availability, a tidier aircraft, purely your own decision making, fewer rules, etc. You actually get to be in charge of your trips. In most cases, aircraft rental is nothing like car rental. It’s better described as “pay to have a go in our aircraft under some closely-controlled conditions”.

And of course anyone who has much more money than that and wants to fly a lot buys their own aeroplane. There is overlap too, because some quite rich people (at least in the UK) are in groups, presumably to limit financial exposure and maybe because flying is only a secondary interest. Conversely there are some sole owners who aren’t very rich at all, but dedicate some really quite large % of their income to flying – more than would be workable for most of us.

Silvaire wrote:

Flying from Innsbruck to Zell am See in a Mooney last month was more nonsense that I would put up with, in one country for a trip of what, 50 miles? I started to get the message when Innsbruck Tower forbade an intersection takeoff with 1500 meters available, due to their understanding of turbulence on the upwind. The pilot’s decision making? Not important.

I heard some “funny” stories out of Innsbruck recently. Question however, which runway? Towards the city, I would understand why they don’t want that due to noise abatement, the higher the less complaints. Also Innsbruck is hardly the “normal” airport as Austria has a rule for Flightplans needed from/to their larger aerodromes.

You could however start out from Zell am See and fly happily to anywhere in the Schengen Area without any formalities (provided the destination does not require anything either).

Silvaire wrote:

In order for GA travel not to decline when other options for travel have actually become easier in Europe, VFR at least needs to be like a car – no flight plan, no PPR, no overcomplex airspace, no operating hours, ideally no radio communication, no nothing. That may be true for limited cross border destinations to/from Germany, but it is not the relatively unattractive norm.

Actually Germany is pretty much like that if you keep out of the airspaces which is comparatively easy. No radio, well… I understand that even the US requires radio to cross Bravo e.t.c. airspaces and unicom are used around airports quite widely and there are quite some complex airspaces there as well as soon as you get to a larger inhabited area such as SOCAL or the eastern seaboard.

For larger airports however I fully agree that PPR and is a huge deterrent and so are unnecessary and hugely complex airspaces e.g. in France, Belgium and some other places. In most cases however, you learn fast enough that while someone has been performing indecent acts over a map, most of those airspaces are hardly ever active or can be crossed quite normally.

I live in area with a great deal of Bravo airspace but last flew in it several years ago. There’s generally no reason in the US, because the airspace was designed so that GA traffic has other reasonable options. The fact that the whole activity is reasonable, plus good weather locally, underlies why there are maybe 1500-2000 GA operations a day from airports in my local area. In order for an activity to attract participants it has to be reasonable in comparison with other options to spend the same money.

The Innsbruck runway was the one facing the city, but the reason to deny clearance for an intersection takeoff with a mile of runway remaining was a long explanation on Tower frequency of “reports of turbulence over the city” I was a bit dumbfounded hearing this, having no understanding of ATC’s relevance in this regard.

You are correct about needing a flight plan to return VFR from Zell am Zee to Innsbruck. My friend did it on his phone while we ate lunch, and with that in mind I have to say it was extremely nice of him to take me for a ride for no particular reason. He likes to fly but regardless it took a lot for effort and a significant Avgas expense.

ATC was a bit amazing, there was zero other traffic at Innsbruck either departing or arriving, it’s a sleepy regional airport. When arriving it seemed that tower called every turn and altitude change inbound and as I recall didn’t give a landing clearance until established on a very long final, photo below. I might be incorrect on the latter point, I’m going by memory. Anyway my reaction might have been to ask “could we maybe cut this short so can I just land now?”

The long winded airport ATC communication in Europe is BTW something I’ve come to call “Euro Concierge ATC” Towers don’t have much to do, one plane or so on frequency so to my ears it sounds more like a long conversation than normal ATC comm.

Silvaire wrote:

In order for GA not to decline when other options for travel have actually become easier in Europe, it needs to be like a car – no flight plan, no PPR, ideally no radio communication, no nothing. That may be true for limited cross border destinations to/from Germany, but it is not the unattractive norm.

Very true. The “risk” for the public by “uncontrolled” GA seems, to me at least, less than that by a reckless motorcycle or car driver, but this is in no way reflected by the level of burdens and regulations heaped upon simple cross-border day VFR ops.