We have no need whatsoever for anything except a 4-600 m grass strip
Not many of that community fly anywhere near Greece. I did once meet a French guy at Corfu, in a Robin, with 3 women, who flew all the way there with a Michelin road atlas which he proudly showed us, but that is pretty rare 
This isn’t difficult. Just look at how Corfu used to work in the “30 quid” days. It was dumb because you paid 15 quid at one office and 15 quid (or so) at another (airside – CAA) office, so half an hour of walking around. But it worked, and that is how Greece works: never employ 1 person if you can employ 10. Same in all of 3rd World really. It is their local version of social security. In the West the extra 9 will have been fired and are collecting social security payments. Arguably Greece has a “socially nicer” system, but it locks everybody in inefficient ways of working.
The points made by LeSving are very valid.
The problem being that no aerodrome open to both commercial and leisure ga is cheap to operate. Whether it’s operated privately or state owned, someone has to pay.
In the smaller airports there are various methods of funding the airfield and the more commercial traffic you can attract the less they need to rely on other sources of funding.
Plus CAT traffic brings lots of people who spend lots of money in shops, restaurants, bars and hotels.
GA traffic for the most part makes up very little of the income any airport or airfield receives. LFAT might well be an exception.
But even if the majority of airfields throughout Europe made landing fees between zero and €50, how much ga traffic would they actually get? No handling, no parking fees.
Just reading previous threads travelling GA pilots want an airfield in a sunny country with plenty of local amenities like restaurants and hotels, things to visit and entertainment for the kids taxis or other forms of public transport nearby, or hire cars, a hard runway minimum length 600m plus, hard standing apron, equipped with tie down chains or other form of tie down, RNAV and conventional approaches preferably LPV or ILS. No slots. Have I missed anything. Ah yes people who speak English and C+I without PN or PPR.
And of course all services and amenities have to be able to be cancelled or delayed at the last moment, without fee even at the busiest times of the year when space could be rented out 10 times over.
In this part of France we have a good many airfields which offer all of that except for the last 2 or perhaps 3 depending on hotel bookings. Do these fields get enough ga travellers to keep an airfield afloat? NO.
And that would still be exactly the same if those last 2 were available, so why would they give GA preferential treatment ?
What is GAs offer to Airfield managers really need to deal with keeping what they have not fretting over what they might get. GA is just not that important these days except to those enthusiasts such a GA pilots. After all, again from EuroGA threads, a large proportion of GA pilots can’t even get their family and friends to fly with them.
IMO as LeSving writes we must be realistic and support what we can achieve.
Hooray the sun has arrived and no storms showing for the 1st time this week. Time to get the SG out and go visit some small, ga friendly fields for coffee or 2.🙂
Peter wrote:
Not many of that community fly anywhere near Greece
Not many of any community flies to-, or in Greece apparently, which is a major part of the problem, well in Greece at least A large portion of private GA is a “been there, done that” thing. Nothing wrong with that, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of traffic in total. Much less than in any shape or form can sustain a “GA pressure” worth considering. In Norway it’s Lofoten (also among Norwegian pilots). For some odd reason “everyone” has to check of Lofoten on their bucket list. However, the reason it even is possible, is because of local (national in this case) lobbying with Avinor who owns all the commercial/public airports. In the northern parts there are few private strips, but many smaller Avinor airports. They can be used in principle 24/7 (15/7 to be precise ) by anyone at a reasonable cost, and parking is free.
The point is, it hasn’t happened by itself. It’s a continuous battle, done by NLF officially for the strategic stuff, but in practice by everyone, every single one of us having a home base at one of those airports. Even so, the majority of GA activity is on strips and airports not owned by Avinor. It’s just so much easier to not have to consider fences and security and access cards and whatnot on an everyday basis.
No matter how you look at this, it’s the work of the locals that enables GA flying. Not everyone has a relatively GA friendly Avinor to deal with (for millions of stupid reasons I’m sure), but everyone can make and operate their own strips. This is what most do anyway. It’s much more important to support that where it exists, than to whine over lost cases. Greece is obviously a lost case until someone in Greece do something about it.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
That there are no infrastructure oriented smaller airports however has to do with the presumption that GA is only for the rich and privileged and does not need specific and well equipped airports for them.
If I haven’t already said it, I totally disagree with this GA is what we make it, and how the public look at it, is also up to us. Biz-jets is obviously “rich and privileged”, but SEP is more in the “charmingly nuts and adventurous” category, but nothing more than having a decent (30+ feet) sail boat. That’s my experience.
Greece is a wonderful place to fly to and fly around. Nothing in Europe compares. See some of my Greek trip writeups here.
Not many fly to Greece because it costs about 1k in avgas to get there and back (from central-ish Europe). But you can spend that on airline tickets if you want to visit a few places. OTOH lots of people have done Greece over the years – myself being one of them. But now their numbers are far fewer, due to fraport charges. One can still go there and do a lot of the smaller islands but a lot of nice places – e.g. Samos, Kefalonia – are just going to rip you off.
Not to mention the effective suppression of their domestic GA scene.
The weekend protests in Palma Mallorca against mass tourism might just serve to help authorities recognise the value of high end tourism and private aircraft visitors!.Welcome us with fariness instead of fleecing and driving us away!……
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/new…c4f638e8&ei=56
Do GA pilots and their families spend more than the average punter? Excluding the private jet brigade of course. And if they are spending €40,000 for a villa for 2 weeks in Mallorca and a couple of thousand for a meal out for the family, then they are not going worry about 1 or 2 thousand for landing and handling fees.
The other reality is that 99% of GA pilots are VFR pilots. We have no need whatsoever for anything except a 4-600 m grass strip, fuel and a hangar.
Let’s all move to Norway, a land of beautiful weather year around, accessible GA airfields and cheap fuel.
Peter wrote:
Not many fly to Greece because it costs about 1k in avgas to get there and back (from central-ish Europe).
I don’t think that’s a significant reason. Distance may well have an impact due overall aircraft costs, not just fuel, especially for those who rent. But anyone who owns an aircraft suitable for longer-distance travel (i.e. cruise speed > ca. 100KT) can afford and should certainly not be deterred by 1k in avgas. The further the distance from Greece, the faster the aircraft likely needs to be in order for Greece to be an attractive destination, mostly due to travel time.
