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Which countries allow private strips / operating from your own land, and how hard is it to organise (and airfields for sale)

Spain: I have not looked at the legalities in any detail, but my impression is that it is either impossible or a very lengthy process to get a private field approved. An example of ‘impossible’ is a friend who owns a large estate in the middle of nowhere on the mainland where he wanted a dirt strip to commute to once in a while from Mallorca. An example of ‘lengthy’ is the private field where I’m based. Took about 5 years and several different burocratic processes.

Things may have been different decades ago, like for real estate development and doing modifications to one’s home. But Spain has made a definite move towards more regulation, helped by regularly updated satellite imagery And less corruption, which is a good thing of course.

Legally, I think a helipad is easier. IIRC should you operate less than 3 times a month, there is not much you need to do. And landing on non-heliports is also not a big deal. Officially you need approval of the landowner, the municipality and the CAA, but asking permission of the latter two is almost never done. But as always with these things, everything’s fine unless there in an accident and then the big law book gets dusted off..

Private field, Mallorca, Spain

Peter wrote:

And a runway is under the heading of “change of use” which normally needs 10 years to legitimise.

But my thought experiment is absolutely not about “curtilage” or “change of use”: if you have a large lawn, it doesn’t become a “road” just because you drove a car across it, so in the same sense could you successfully argue it’s not a runway, but a remains a lawn, even if a STOL aircraft happened to touch it, just as it remains a lawn and not a road just because someone happened to drive a car over it?

Essentially, that’s what our guy did here – grew a crop in his field and flew his 337 and Cherokee off basically a farm track that ran through the middle of the field. There was no way the planners could argue the field was anything other than agriculture as it actually had a crop growing in it, and farm fields absolutely need paths through them, and it just so happened that one of them was able to take planes as well as tractors.

Last Edited by alioth at 09 Nov 10:57
Andreas IOM

Jacko wrote:

It’s perhaps worth pointing out that in Scotland and England, breach of planning regulations is not an offence.

Worth qualifying this by saying that while being in breach of planning regulations is not in itself a criminal offence, failure to comply with an enforcement notice (which is the standard remedy available to a local planning authority) IS a criminal offence.

More information here.

Last Edited by Graham at 09 Nov 12:17
EGLM & EGTN

failure to comply with an enforcement notice (which is the standard remedy available to a local planning authority) IS a criminal offence.

Worth further qualifying this by saying that planning enforcement and stop notices are rather a rare “last resort” (our LPA typically issues barely half a dozen a year) and non-compliance is only an offence in the event of a successful prosecution, which the Crown can not bring while there is an active appeal.

Last Edited by Jacko at 10 Nov 00:24
Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

MedEwok wrote:

A colleague once told me of a property he bought, which he wanted to modify. During the planning applications, it was discovered that the property had been illegally modified by the previous owner, some 20 years earlier. The colleague and new owner was not only refused permission to go ahead with his plans, but had to reverse the previous owner’s illegal modifications. This severely lowered the value of the whole property.

Same in Switzerland.

One catch also is the so called quote of land use (Ausnützungsziffer) which defines, how much of your land may actually be used for dwellings. This is a quote put into place to avoid the situation that houses sit too close to each other.

Couple of years ago when we bought our place, I applied for and got permission to enclose a balcony, adding 5 m2 to my livable space. This was calculated on the base of the actual land I own (150m2) and the livable area of my house (which includes all rooms, kitchen, bath but not cellars and stair cases). A few years later I inquired about extending another room with a wintergarten and the new engineer in our community told me it can not be approved due to the quota, then found that it had already been exceeded by 0.75 m2 and told me not to apply for anything as he would then have to find that I am in violation, despite that having been (injustly) approved 20 years ago by his predecessor. In the mean time we managed to sort this out for good but I can definitly never get another extension unless the quota is changed.

As for airstrips or heliports, apart from planning and building laws this depends much more on neighbours. Today, it is basically impossible to build anything without approval of all the neighbours around and flying objects tend to generate the NIMBY effect almost immediately. Not limited to that, my neighbours here actually have been trying to open their garden fence and park a car on their own piece of land, this has not been approved by the community for the better part of a decade now.

Airfields generate noise, helipads even more so. I can honestly not see how anyone will get permit to do this as noise is something people massively oppose. Helicopters even more so as they are quite noisy. Even drones today are very much under scrutiny. Apart from that, large areas in Switzerland are already within restricted airspace.

Not too long ago I saw a nice vacation home which would have been perfect for a helipad next to it as driving there is a total PITA… but knowing this country, there is no chance anyone would allow this. Apart from the fact that in order to transport a medium family with baggage and shopping would require something like a UH1.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Today I saw on German television, specifically on NDR, a short clip about a North German farmer who, according to the reporter, owns “Germany’s only privately owned [farm] airfield”

( Link , note that German public broadcasters tend to geo-lock their online content, so it might not be viewable from abroad)

The man is named as Rudolf Thode, living in Offenbüttel, Schleswig-Holstein. He’s a farmer and built a 306 m grass airstrip on his own property, which he uses frequently with a C42 ULM.

Interestingly, the clip specifically mentions that it cost him “9000€, countless permissions and a ground survey” to be able to build the airfield.

The tone of the report is very friendly and positive of the “flying farmer’s” activity.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Out of curiosity, can anyone outside Germany get the video I linked above to play?

The audio is in German only and there are no subtitles I am afraid, but it was a nice little, positively framed story about GA, which is rare in today’s mainstream media.

Low-hours pilot
EDVM Hildesheim, Germany

Rudolf Thode may be the only one in media, but there are plenty of private airstrips in Germany like his without talking to outsiders. My list does have a three digit number of strips not on the official maps. Btw, same is true for the famous ‘FoF’ – Fliegen ohne Flugleiter – or flying without somebody on the radio on the ground – they don’t talk on their doings due to media and activists. Germans tend to hide their flying habits as far as possible given the current political mad rush.

Last Edited by MichaLSA at 22 Oct 10:16
Germany

MedEwok wrote:

Out of curiosity, can anyone outside Germany get the video I linked above to play?

Plays OK here in the UK

United Kingdom

MedEwok wrote:

Out of curiosity, can anyone outside Germany get the video I linked above to play?

Yes.

The audio is in German only and there are no subtitles I am afraid, but it was a nice little, positively framed story about GA, which is rare in today’s mainstream media.

Very nice piece.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden
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