This is why EGHI has no interest in GA. Parking for maybe 5 little planes
It’s a grand shame, but it’s a healthy diversion opportunity on the south coast. At least it’s got that going for it, as the weather is generally a lot clearer than London.
They never liked GA – both on the ground there, and (especially recently) in the air as “Solent Radar”.
Why, I am not sure. One reason might be that they are a NATS unit – see e.g. here – and there is a general tendency among NATS airports to not be too keen on GA. Hard to know why that is too, but NATS employees (both current and retired) tend to be the least friendly on social media (usually in contravention of company social media policy, but that policy is suspended if you are beating up a GA pilot ). A sentiment often expressed is that most GA doesn’t pay route charges.
Is that me or they show the ultimate contempt towards GA ?
How times change. More light aircraft operations towards the end.
Not sure if this is current info but they only ever had 5 parking places “painted on the tarmac”, for GA, which made it tricky to go there in practice, regardless of cost.
Southampton airport will no longer accept private GA aircraft for training instrument approaches. They will however accept commercial operators (including flying schools) for training. The reason being they are preparing for normal operations on 17th May. If my memory serves me right 90% of there traffic was Flybe, which went bust. The joys of GA. Anybody got a private Citation or TBM900, I bet they wouldn’t say no.
Only if there’s a sea change in how airports are managed in the UK, as infrastructure, not as a shopping mall – currently they aren’t airports but shopping malls that happen to have colocated runways.
Alderney, Guernsey and Jersey have now announced they require all visitors to self isolate for 14 days on arrival. That will remove a third of the handful of remaining Southampton CAT movements.
Can I see the airport being nationalised in the near future and hope for a return to its former glory as an active GA airfield with the occasional commercial arrival and departure?
You can book a half hour slot for £25 + VAT and do as many approaches as you like in that half hour. I did it a few days ago.