Fantastic picture, beautiful
Beautiful, and great light 
I was at Old Sarum quickly today (by car). The skydiving is still in operation because we regularly see the parachutes over Salisbury when it’s sunny. The café is open, as is the aviation museum, and there was a PA28 doing circuits so it looks like school is still flying too. SkyDemon calls it disused but the website says “Old Sarum Airfield is open to commercial operators with prior agreement.”
Unfortunately my one year old was much more excited about the grass cutting tractor than the plane doing touch and goes.
Basically Old Sarum is owned by a property developer playing a long(ish) game.
His planning application to build houses on the site was rejected by the local council, so now he’s playing the ‘neighbour from hell’ game by closing it to any users except the resident skydiving company.
I believe his strategy is to irritate the local populace (with a jump plane going up and down dozens of times a day, doubtless right over the various villages) to such an extent that the council is forced to approve his housing development to make the nuisance go away.
It is an unfortunate side effect of UK planning rules and aerodromes not being considered part of transport infrastructure. Every aerodrome owner has half an eye on the possibility of closing down and building houses on the site – they would make many millions.
I heard Old Sarum was closed except for the based skydiving company, but this is only word-of-mouth.
Their website says closed to all movements. A google search finds a number of newspaper articles quoting the manager saying it was closing to stop losing money as their alternative plans to partially develop the site didn’t get permission.
http://www.oldsarumairfield.co.uk
If in fact it’s still open and only closed for covid then that would be great.
dublinpilot wrote:
A pity that that airfield is gone now.
It is? There is a NOTAM out that says prior authorisation required?
I was going to suggest Old Sarum, but I see it’s closed now unfortunately.
It had the historic Old Sarum site adjacent to it.
Old Sarum
A pity that that airfield is gone now.
quatrelle wrote:
“was that in a PA46”
It was in a piper cub, not my PA46. I would fly there in the Mirage too, but land gingerly as the runway is very hard and a tiny bit rutted at the moment. Also, if landing on the easterly RWY, there is a long 200m dip in the runway, starting maybe 150m from the threshold. Would want to be careful with that.
