Hello Achim,
very nice to see you back here!
achimha wrote:
There are many ways to fund public infrastructure.
The first and foremost item here has to be the reckognition that airports as well as airfields ARE infrastructure!
In Europe, that is not something which goes easy with some people. While they may take for granted that there are large airline purpose airports and those are infrastructure, GA airports are often regarded as a playing field for the rich and filthy on the back of the proletariat. And that is totally wrong. Regional airports and airfields, as long as they are open to the public, ARE infrastructure and deserve the same public support other infrastructure gets without a 2nd thought!
Price out GA on certain airports or limit the number of movements to a fixed amount and all that is something which nobody would consider on roads or other infrastructure. EVERYONE who uses that infrastructure pais his dues and the remainder is picked up by the taxpayer, it works for roads, railways and everything, so why not for airports.
Airport managers have a difficult position indeed unless they also own the airport, when the difficulties become different, not necessarily less. Those who are civil servants or head publicly funded companies on airports have the unenvionable task of satisfying all of politicians, anti noise groups, tenants and, often least of all, the users of the airport. With airports increasingly becoming shopping centers first and airports sencond, that is not always a very easy task. Maybe it would be a good thing if the FBO system as it is run in the US would be tried out in Europe, let GA be served by a dedicated company who does not do that by the by but as it’s primary reason of being. Ah well, maybe some day.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Maybe it would be a good thing if the FBO system as it is run in the US would be tried out in Europe, let GA be served by a dedicated company who does not do that by the by but as it’s primary reason of being. Ah well, maybe some day.
Yes, that is what what next’s airport EDDS thought and awarded that task to the company Kurz Aviation who built a magnificent GA terminal and excellent hangars, etc. Being the official monopolist and having invested many millions and being located in wealthy region, they soon started to milk customers like there is no tomorrow. The service is definitely good but the prices are very steep for everything that has pistons. If you add a second company, they will silently agree on prices, even without having any illegal talks.
Once you start comparing the metropolitan US to Europe, things start to look more similar. Convenient GA access to e.g. New York City isn’t cheap either.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Maybe it would be a good thing if the FBO system as it is run in the US would be tried out in Europe, let GA be served by a dedicated company who does not do that by the by but as it’s primary reason of being. Ah well, maybe some day.
And put them in competition with each other, either on the same airport or nearby airports.
Europe is a really great place to vacation, with great history, languages and old cultures, but otherwise on the practical level exemplified by this thread I’m happy I escaped at an early age.
what_next wrote:
Looking forward to see that position filled with a GA friendly person who will show us all how an international airport can be run with a profit while still accommodating GA traffic for zero landing fees and free AVGAS for erverybody.
Where do you get this free AVGAS thing from? Nobody wants that from any airport I believe…
achimha wrote:
There is nothing inherently logical about funding airports with federal taxes instead of user fees. You can do that and it makes some people happy but you can also charge user fees. There are many ways to fund public infrastructure.
Ad 1) Many European big airports are still getting EU/state/local government funding besides getting user fees.
Ad 2) User fees should correspond to the actual cost of serving that particular user. If you have a big airport, sized and equipped for airline/charter traffic, serving a light GA user costs about nothing.
what_next wrote:
“We” Europeans – at least a great part – are used to pay for the services we receive. Why should both my grandmas (who never flew once in their lives but worked and paid taxes) pay for an airport? Divide the cost among those who actually use it.
See both points above. Your grandmas are actually paying millions of EUR for EU-funded upgrades at airports like LHDC, which then serve <10 airline/charter flights a day, but price light GA out, terminate the operation of the local club and crave for controlled airspace bigger than LAX’s Class B.
Also, due to the almost nonexistent cost increase when much more GA traffic is served at a non-saturated airline airport (which actually most are), if you decrease user fees to a reasonable level, you will get more users and more net income at the end. So it will even work from a business perspective.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Regional airports and airfields, as long as they are open to the public, ARE infrastructure and deserve the same public support other infrastructure gets without a 2nd thought!
If you look at those airfields you will see that most of these got a lot of public support at least once: When they were built. Almost every airport and airfield I visit started out as a military base and was initially built on public land and with government money. But that was in a different time and with a different purpose. Now is 2017 and we have a dense network of roads and trains all over Europe. Airports are not essential infrastructure here apart from those few which serve mostly long-distance connections. It is quicker to travel by train from Zürich (downtown) to Stuttgart (downtown), yet there are several airline connections per day. Why should the tax paying public subsidise such nonsense? And that is only one example of many.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
Maybe it would be a good thing if the FBO system as it is run in the US would be tried out in Europe, let GA be served by a dedicated company who does not do that by the by but as it’s primary reason of being.
A lot of airports have those, in Europe we don’t call them FBO but “handling agents”. At my homebase, as Achim already wrote above, all GA traffic from flying school to Boeing buiseness Jet is handled through them. Did it make GA operations cheaper? On the contrary….
Silvaire wrote:
And put them in competition with each other, either on the same airport or nearby airports.
Ever been to Paris Le Bourget? There are a dozen competing handling agents there. The prices vary between “very expensive” and “outrageously expensive”. But at least you can choose which one to take.
what_next wrote:
People who don’t use roads at all don’t have to pay for roads
That is complete bull. It’s all part of the infrastructure of which everybody benefits, whether they “use” the roads or not. It’s the same with airports. It’s just that it has become fashionable to pay per “use”, which does no other purpose than to create overheads and corporate bureaucracy. All in all, services becomes worse and at the same time more expensive for everyone. IMO, some “communism” is good and necessary. Today we have gone way overboard in the other direction, micromanaging nonsense companies for no good reason.
what_next wrote:
Beat that
Easy 
A headline today was that our “oil fund” has passed 8 thousand billion NOK. It is the largest fund in the world now. This means each and every Norwegian citizen has 1.54 MNOK (about € 170k) in that fund if we should split it up today. It is used for pensions though. This is in addition to the other private pensions. We also have free school all the way (who hasn’t in Europe anyway? ), free hospital etc.
LeSving wrote:
This is in addition to the other private pensions
How much do you have in a private pension?
what_next wrote:
Ever been to Paris Le Bourget? There are a dozen competing handling agents there. The prices vary between “very expensive” and “outrageously expensive”. But at least you can choose which one to take.
Apparently somebody needs to breed a more combative and competitive culture between FBOs, versus silent agreements made between over-titled airport aristocracy. In the US they fight like cats and dogs on fuel price, ramp fees and etc… to our amusement and benefit.
Re NYC and its inane costs, anywhere east of the Mississippi is of no interest to me for several reasons but otherwise (including at busy metropolitan airports) I often tie down somewhere and leave a few dollars a day in an envelope because there is no staff. My passenger does not need the royal treatment at the airport, as long as there’s a bathroom. For fuel I call the cheapest FBO published for that airport and they send the truck over. Or I taxi to self serve if I’m feeling cheap and energetic.
LeSving wrote:
Today we have gone way overboard in the other direction, micromanaging nonsense companies for no good reason.
Yes. The issue is the proper role of government, and constitutional definition of same.
LeSving wrote:
We also have free school all the way (who hasn’t in Europe anyway?)
European graduate students in US graduate schools? That privileged class of Europeans and others does subsidize the cost for US residents, via inflated prices applied to them, so the European system of limited supply works well for us too 
My university education required very little from me. Regardless, nothing is free, the only issue is spreading the costs. Making a little profit from educating foreigners does help, even at my home base airport where many Europeans learn to fly.
Shorrick_Mk2 wrote:
How much do you have in a private pension?
Substantially more than on Friday
The central point in this debate with reference to GA is that nearly all airport costs are fixed, so any GA revenue does straight to the bottom line. In my business I would never drop or disadvantage a product which does that. All the time you are not at capacity, the more the better!
And the vast majority of airports to which GA flies are nowhere near capacity. And most of those which are, are so only at times (London Gatwick is one example) and could sell slots to GA via a website. Lots of people would pay £100 to use Gatwick, as an H24 airport with everything there and its own train station. Bizjets routinely pay £3000 there.
So, why isn’t this happening?
I think the reason is that airport managers are mostly empire building types. These types gravitate to airport management in the same way that perverts gravitate towards the church, the boy scouts, physical education teaching jobs, etc
I think the reason for the generally low competence of airport management is that it is a type of service which the next management level above (usually the local govt) doesn’t understand, and this allows “clever characters” with delusions of grandeur to build an empire which is above scrutiny. Throw in the heavy safety-regulatory climate and it is even harder to oversee the operation because almost any attempt at controlling costs (staffing is the biggest one) will be defended with a raft of regulatory compliance requirements. My local airport, Shoreham, is a really perfect example of exactly this. It went on for many years, including a fire service for 150-seat airliners (based on a consultant’s report saying a BAE146 could land there) and when the local govt realised they had been hoodwinked, they panicked and sold the place to the first bunch of property crooks that came along, who immediately sold most of the commercial property income to another bunch of crooks.
I am also certain that most of the French “chamber of commerce funded” airports are in the above situation i.e. the funding body has no clue what is going on (or it is “socially involved”, so they turn a blind eye). It’s obvious that e.g. Dinard’s 12 month delay in sending out invoices must be something like this.
