Bloody hell. They must have really been annoyed with GA then. What is this and who runs the airport? I am going to contact them, because this is a perfect place to divert and get Eurostar if you can’t make the UK.
boscomantico wrote:
And also note the cancellation fees, which are becoming common these days. They treat the PPR like a hotel booking these days! How ridiculous.They even have delayed arrival surcharges!
pilotrobbie wrote:
this is a perfect place to divert and get Eurostar if you can’t make the UK.
And it was a great place to land for Paris while flying from the UK.
It was indeed.
pilotrobbie wrote:
– 100% for assistance on Sundays and on local public holidays between 22:00 on Sunday to 06:00 (next day).
-100% sounds like a bargain 
I’ve been in email contact with them and they have stated that there are no cancellation fees as were being mentioned in a previous post
pilotrobbie wrote:
What is this and who runs the airport?
It is run by a company created just for that purpose, “AEROPORT DE LILLE SAS”, “SAS” being a kind of simplified company limited by shares. I’m not sure who owns the company (might be a large operator like Edeis, but my guess is more like the region/département/intercommunale, that is some subdivision of the French State), but it operates under a “délégation de service public”, that is (a subdivision of) the State “outsources” a mission considered the mission of (that subdivision of) the state (keeping the streets clean, running an airport, maintaining roads, …) to a commercial company, which can be privately owned for profit, or owned by (a subdivision of) the state.
Which means the (subdivision of the) state that outsourced that mission to them has leverage, they are the customer, they set the parameters of the mission, they don’t renew the contract if the mission is not done well, etc.
These airports are run by lazy people, who don’t realise (or don’t care) that since most of their costs are fixed, every €30 they get from GA goes straight to their bottom line. And Lille has nothing happening ~95% of the time. It could have been an excellent GA destination. As with most of the airport police, the less work the better. Same with most of the Spanish airports…
Bizjets will pay any 3 digit price happily and most regard anything in 3 digits to be good value. I know some pilots. An EGKB-LFMD charter is 5k-10k so the landing fee is trivial. This assists with this kind of result.
Well, all commercial airports follow the same strategy. What could we do to avoid it ?
Lille airport is operated by a group made of Eiffage (construction company) and the Marseille LFML operating company. Before 2020, it was a 60% public-40% private group.
Anyway, public or private (see below), their job is to make profit (or cut the losses) and nothing else.
Maybe the higher fees are a way to make a profit for a limited number of parking spots. Having a spot blocked by some GA paying 10€ wouldn’t make sense if a jet wants to come.
For 2023, plan a few k€ for landing fees or a STOL kit
As an anecdote, I know a guy who used to manage a 100% public technical college (IUT in French) and he was somehow asked to find money, otherwise he couldn’t pay the electricity bills. His budget was like expenses 100 – grant 60 and go find the rest yourself. That’s why apprenticeship programmes have appeared in the last years in every university and college. They bring money and cost less to the univ.
Jujupilote wrote:
Having a spot blocked by some GA paying 10€ wouldn’t make sense if a jet wants to come.
That is only if all spots are taken, or at risk of being taken, which is very emphatically not the case for Lille any time I went there… Else you get XXX EUR from the and the 10 from the light GA.
Jujupilote wrote:
For 2023, plan a few k€ for landing fees or a STOL kit
<sarcasm>And land in the highway (autoroute) when the weather is IFR?</sarcasm>
Maybe the higher fees are a way to make a profit for a limited number of parking spots
Solution: sell parking spots from a website, say €20/day.
Experience from other areas of human endeavour, during the era (approximately; there is limited documentation from earlier times) 4000 BC to 2022 AD, is that if Joe Bloggs has to pay something, even something trivial, he will attach a “value” to it and behave appropriately, otherwise … not.
Perhaps EuroGA should run some PHP on its airports database server, implementing this, and offer it to airports all over Europe. Skim off 1% as a donation to our community
