Landing, Parking and Handling Fees Database

An attempt has been made with the AID.
It has been devised almost ten years ago. Unfortunately traffic has been (and still is) a little too low to obtain a somewhat complete and current database of pilot reports…

There have been several such initiatives, but all suffered from insufficient traffic just like the one mentioned above. The least disappointing seem to be by country, for instance navigeo for France or eddh for Germany.

Quite a few countries have the fees for all ICAO-coded aerodromes (not just the IFR ones) listed in the AIP.

I think the biggest issue with such a database would be that at so many airports costs to GA vary according to how one manages to circumvent “mandatory handling” arrangements.

And what works for one person (e.g. a native speaker) may not work for another (e.g. a visitor to the country).

I have seen this so many times…. one person says you can avoid the €100 charge by such and such a method but when I land there that option is absolutely not available because the handling van is next to me even before I shut down the engine, so there is no escape.

And if there was a way, and it got published, it would get closed off. For example, at Norwich Airport, UK, there was a way to avoid the £50 charge by exiting via a specific hangar. Another, more official, way was by exiting via a flying school which charged just £10 (but which pocketed the money, due to cash flow problems, and after some months the airport started to chase me for the £50). At Bournemouth Airport, there are / have been various ways, usually involving taxiing to a maintenance company, but the handler there started to get nasty about this and wanted to know exactly what work you are having done.

Even if you go fully official, the price will vary according to which handler grabs you.

Then you get airports where there is “no parking” (or parking on a really crappy soft surface) unless you go via a handler and then hard parking magically appears – for €100-200. For a rented PA28 you will risk it. For a TB20/SR22 you might take the risk (especially if it isn’t your plane). For a 2T-3T twin, you are looking at the “other price”. Mikonos LGMK in Greece, La Rochelle in France…

Also airports change their pricing, but internet forums preferentially carry out of date information if it is negative. Somebody would have to run the site and keep updating the pricing from website price lists, etc. It would have to be an advert funded site.

The best you will get is a website which carries pilot reports, like those above, but very few pilots bother to type in good information. We live in a world of one-liners chucked in with smartphones…

The simplest way to plan a trip is to phone the airports. Apart from Portugal, Spain and Italy, most European ones have English speaking OPS staff.

The vast majority of European airports have fees which are not significant in the context of the fuel burn on a decent length trip. You need to weed out the really bad ones, and there are a number of ~€500 airports. Most of them are very well known e.g. Gatwick Luton Stansted Farnborough in the UK, Frankfurt Munich in Germany. The ones which are less well known are the ones which charge say €200 which is still an outrageous amount and you don’t want to get stung with it unless going there on business (Aberdeen UK is one example). Obviously if you are going to be doing a frequent trip then more due diligence is worth doing. Currently, Shoreham EGKA (my base) is getting absolutely lynched on one UK chat site, over a £30 landing fee, mostly by posters who fly with the mysterious red lever fully forward…

Recently Skydemon added a feature where people can add fuel prices per airport. People are using this feature. Maybe we can ask the Skydemon team to add handling and landing fees.

You are right about the unfair Shoreham lynching, but aren’t they all “chat” sites?

This thread has too much waffle and does not answer the original post.

UK: One forum website has a Price League table for UK airports for a 757 kg plane.
Spain: http://www.aena-aeropuertos.es/csee/ccurl/416/955/Price%20Guide%202013_october.pdf – Airport fees only. Handling fees are separate.