In response to criticism that if you own a private aircraft you can afford it. Because we may be able to afford to own and operate our private aircraft, and afford a home on a beautiful island, this does not mean we are content to waste or be fleeced of significant amounts of money that are out of line with value or the usual service charges in the vast majority of the worlds aviation destinations.
This new terminal charge has nothing to do with the handler salary. The handling company did not receive a cent of this fee 4,800 euro fee charged by the privileged gatekeeper, it being retained wholly by FRAPORT.
I can fully understand the gatekeeper seeking to recover investment made in an improved infrastructure facility. The argument is that the mechanism for such cost recovery should be proportionately scaled to its use, and amortised over a period of time in line with usual financial/accounting practices. Right now the owner of a 1,999kg Seneca flying with his wife for a weekend are charged the same as 12 pax arriving in a 45tn Gulfstream. This cannot be a logical or fair situation.
Flyingwineman wrote:
This cannot be a logical or fair situation.
But it is. When everything is commercialized, and in this case also in practice monopolized, this is the situation we get. If the only hotel in town is a five star with luxury suits, then there’s no use complaining you have no need whatsoever for the services offered and golden plated taps. You still have to pay for the room. The reason there are no other hotels, is because the market for those hotels doesn’t exist.
Clearly commercialization of aviation is not good for GA. The irony is that the only place that has not commercialized aviation (infrastructure and ATC services) is the USA.
The alternative in Europe is ULs, experimentals and grass/gravel fields.
chflyer wrote:
Why continue to complain about the major commercial or wanabe airports rather than support and promote those that are more suitable and attractive for our needs?
Exactly my view as well.
Flyingwineman wrote:
In response to criticism that if you own a private aircraft you can afford it.
The reason most of us can afford a private aircraft is because we don’t waste money on things that are clearly not value for money. None of these Fraport fees are even vaguely value for money (what exactly does this handling buy you?) even if they were only 10% of what they currently are. It’s absurd when keeping a small aircraft on a windswept concrete apron for a night costs significantly more than the stay in a nice hotel and meal for two at a Michelin starred restaurant.
Why continue to complain about the major commercial or wanabe airports rather than support and promote those that are more suitable and attractive for our needs?
Corfu is a great airport and used to cost about 30 quid… I’d say it is a significant loss to GA. The alternative, Ioanina LGIO, is good but much of the time out of avgas, plus surrounded by terrain so more challenging to get into.
Those of us who have been flying for say 20 years and have done some distances will have nice memories of a lot of places which are now gone. It’s a pity.
Of course one could say the “fraport money extraction” was bound to happen to Greece which was never able to organise a p1ssup in a brewery and was happy to borrow billions which everybody knew it could never repay and which Mrs Merkel “was always going to sign a cheque for” … until she didn’t, and then Brussels ditched Greece because it was a small enough player to dump on the scrapheap. Will a lesson be learnt? I doubt it. I’d just like to know what happened to the 1,000,000 Porsche Cayennes owned by those Greeks who happened to sit on the money stream for long enough … maybe they are in Moscow? 
There is more of this still due to run its course, and much closer to “home”.
I agree completely about the infrastructure at Corfu. My point is that we should all be supporting the Greek AOPA because they are doing the right things to make for change. Venting here is perhaps satisfying for us pilots, but achieves nothing and just depresses everyone about the situation in Greece in general.
Flyingwineman wrote:
In response to criticism that if you own a private aircraft you can afford it.
Well, the truth is owning a light GA aircraft, one can afford a light GA aircraft (that much is a tautology), but not necessarily thousand(s) of EUR in airport fees…
Frans wrote:
Munich (EDDM) and also Oberpfaffenhofen (EDMO) is open to all traffic above 2 tons MTOW.
I was not aware of that, but that does not change much for us. Munich is pretty much dead as a GA destination, you need to use either Augsburg or some other far away places.
Frans wrote:
However, to be fair though, some destinations are only reachable by these expensive airports. Think of Salzburg, Corfu or Billund… What is the alternate? Especially if you fly IFR…
Exactly that is the problem and that is why the glass is not only “half empty” but pretty much becoming a desert. s
I live 6 minutes from LSZH, had my plane there for 10 years and got it IFR equipped for insane money to be able to fly in and out of my workplace of 40 years. Now I was forced to relocate to a very nice place but which has no IFR and no night and no non-schengen customs. All alternates to ZRH are small day-VFR airfields which are not IFR nor night equipped. Yes, you can still fly to LSZH (as the outpricing is basing there so far) but it is a costly exercise with a lot of red tape such as slots.
My primary destination always was Salzburg which has no such alternate. Apart, my flight time there increases by a good 20 minutes as now instead of a straight line I have to circumnavigate the large ZRH airspace.
My secondary destination would be Geneva sometimes as I have business there at the airport and it also is not welcoming GA. Landing in La Cote or Annemasse is pointless if you end up with a longer travel time than if you take the train from the start. And then you sit at the meeting and look at an empty runway and wonder why can’t I bloody land there.
So my homebase, primary and secondary destination nowadays are all closed to GA.
And in the last 10 years there was more: I regularly went to an event in Oberschleissheim but never got a slot to fly there. You see the bloody runway from the event but it is kept for the privilege of a small flying club.
I fully agree with those who say we should promote the small airfields. Absolutely make a thread for this, I’ll be happy to participate. But that does not help at all with the situation we have with acess to cities and whole countries such as Greece and some others who simply hate GA and do everything to suppress it.
The only thing that has kept me from throwing the towel is the fantastic welcome I got at Birrfeld, the great people there, the atmosphere and the idea that I could fly there without any slot and whenever I want (after 10 years of ZRH that is indeed attractive). But frankly, I more and more ask myself if it’s still worth to even keep my SEP going if all the destinations I usually fly to are gone.
As to the suggestion for a thread for the alternates, I’d think it would be intersting to systematically evaluate alternates to airports which have shut out GA, their possibilities, cost, distance and commute possibilities. That information would be very interesting. Both IFR and VFR. Not all the places are that obvious as Egelsbach for Frankfurt is.
LeSving wrote:
Clearly commercialization of aviation is not good for GA. The irony is that the only place that has not commercialized aviation (infrastructure and ATC services) is the USA.
Exactly. The US looks at airports and ATC as PUBLIC INFRASTRUCTURE whereas in Europe they are looked at as playground for the privileged. That is the big difference.
I think the Corfu problem is
Of course there are many great and affordable places left in Europe. The problem is that this is a long term trend which isn’t going to suddenly reverse. There is a need for “us” to support these bigger airports (those which may currently be €50) by going there sometimes. Shrinking GA to farm strips – an approach many favour – will achieve the shrinking of GA to farm strips but what about those who can’t be based at a farm strip (don’t fancy being waterlogged, etc, etc).
Two identical threads merged.
I wonder if airlines pay 5K per flight for the use of terminal…
