Landing Fees

[biggles5128]

Sorry, meant to reply to SAjabiruflyer

 

 

[Guest SAJabiruflyer]

Sorry, meant to reply to SAjabiruflyer

I wouldnt bother, he's three sheets to the wind:cheers:

 

 

[Neville75]

What annoys me is greedy councils demanding my pound of flesh for greasing one in my 172 when mr qantas and mr virgin slam in several times a day at signinficant subsidy to maintain RPT ops. I don't use the papi, lights nor the 2000m strip. I do however buy their $2.30/l avgas.

 

As a ratepayer I contribute to the local economy. I don't use any of the 12 boat ramps in the community, but boaties don't get charged for each launch. I rarely go to the park, certainly don't frequent our town library, but these are free to all. But pop in to refuel and spent $400 to fill up and they hit you another $14 for the privledge? Certainly not the way to encourage tourism and visitors to the region. But wait.... we pilots are all rich and can afford such luxuries right?

 

I love visiting privately owned and rural/ outback strips and gladly support their efforts & am happy to contribute to their upkeep. Generally though you are always met with enthusiasm and offers of transport or a friendly welcome. Why are some councils so pro aviation eg redcliffe with no fees, but others try to run their airports as a business unit, seeking to make them profitable rather than a community asset. Surely the costs to collect and process these revenues would almost outweigh the income generated?

 

Nev

 

 

[dazza 38]

What annoys me is greedy councils demanding my pound of flesh for greasing one in my 172 when mr qantas and mr virgin slam in several times a day at signinficant subsidy to maintain RPT ops. I don't use the papi, lights nor the 2000m strip. I do however buy their $2.30/l avgas.As a ratepayer I contribute to the local economy. I don't use any of the 12 boat ramps in the community, but boaties don't get charged for each launch. I rarely go to the park, certainly don't frequent our town library, but these are free to all. But pop in to refuel and spent $400 to fill up and they hit you another $14 for the privledge? Certainly not the way to encourage tourism and visitors to the region. But wait.... we pilots are all rich and can afford such luxuries right?

 

I love visiting privately owned and rural/ outback strips and gladly support their efforts & am happy to contribute to their upkeep. Generally though you are always met with enthusiasm and offers of transport or a friendly welcome. Why are some councils so pro aviation eg redcliffe with no fees, but others try to run their airports as a business unit, seeking to make them profitable rather than a community asset. Surely the costs to collect and process these revenues would almost outweigh the income generated?

 

Nev

Good point Nev.Looking at the big picture.

 

 

[planet47]

What annoys me is greedy councils demanding my pound of flesh for greasing one in my 172 when mr qantas and mr virgin slam in several times a day at signinficant subsidy to maintain RPT ops. I don't use the papi, lights nor the 2000m strip. I do however buy their $2.30/l avgas.

 

As a ratepayer I contribute to the local economy. I don't use any of the 12 boat ramps in the community, but boaties don't get charged for each launch. I rarely go to the park, certainly don't frequent our town library, but these are free to all. But pop in to refuel and spent $400 to fill up and they hit you another $14 for the privledge? Certainly not the way to encourage tourism and visitors to the region. But wait.... we pilots are all rich and can afford such luxuries right? ........

 

Thanks for that post. The greedy local council here set a $10 landing fee or one could buy a block of 50 landings for $450.

 

If you chose to go with the block of 50 landings the council decided to charge one GST on top of that but they had also decided to charge GST on top of the $10 landing fee so that fee suddenly became $11 per landing.

 

During August the grass strip was closed for the whole month so in order to use the tarmac, I had to taxi past two cameras which charged me $10 each time, with the GST being added later on. Hence I got a bill for $220 for August which at the most should have been $110. The September bill was similar. The time between the two cameras was shown at the most as being 2 minutes apart. Phoning the groundsman in order to obtain a review of the bills was a completely new experience and two weeks later, he still hadn't done the review citing "I've got a bad back........", etc. Although I could never reproduce the twanging speech of the groundsman, the words of wisdom ran like this "you'll pay whatever we charge you......you're using our facility" and the belligerent attitude resulted in me writing a letter of complaint to the council. Twenty five minutes after dropping the letter in by hand I received a phone call from the council and they had reviewed the bills and would issue a credit note.

 

At the time of writing the letter, I informed the council that I had not received a schedule of their fees for the current financial year so they kindly sent me one. The schedule indicated the landing fee to be $10 and that it included GST so why the $11 fee. I decided to pay the relevant landing fees at $10 per landing only and see where it went from there. I got a phone call from the accounts department at the council because they couldn't reconcile what they felt I owed to what I paid so I told the guy that I was paying it at $10 per landing because their schedule indicated the GST was included. Many questions later, I received another phone call from this guy to say that they would waive the extra $1 for the remainder of the financial year.

 

Issues remain ie weight of aircraft eg mine weighs 250kg fully laden and is a single seat from which I do not derive an income. A freight plane comes in twice a day for 312 days of the year and pays approx $4 per landing or $7 per landing if you are an airline passenger. Equity of access!!!!!

 

 

[P4D]

Hey Ian what about a sticky "No landing fee airstrips for RAA users" or "RAA friendly airfields without fees" .......................?

 

 

[Ultralights]

Thanks for that post. The greedy local council here set a $10 landing fee or one could buy a block of 50 landings for $450.

If you chose to go with the block of 50 landings the council decided to charge one GST on top of that but they had also decided to charge GST on top of the $10 landing fee so that fee suddenly became $11 per landing.

What airport is that? at Bankstown, what was the nations busiest GA airport, my landing fees are only $6 per landing, or a daily charge of $12. for unlimited landings in a 24hr period. and i have use of a manned control tower, nice wide perfectly maintained runways, taxiways, signage, lighting, gravel free runup bays. maintained windsocks. etc etc

 

I like the analogy of the boat owner, and come to think of it, some of my friends who own boats never pay launch ramp fees, or navigation light fees, or lighthouse sighting fees. (well they have never asked me to help pay them after a day on the water)

 

sad thing is, most boats i have seen cost the same if not far more than your average Raaus aircraft. and far more to run.

 

 

[Guest Andys@coffs]

What airport is that? at Bankstown, what was the nations busiest GA airport, my landing fees are only $6 per landing, or a daily charge of $12. for unlimited landings in a 24hr period. and i have use of a manned control tower, nice wide perfectly maintained runways, taxiways, signage, lighting, gravel free runup bays. maintained windsocks. etc etcI like the analogy of the boat owner, and come to think of it, some of my friends who own boats never pay launch ramp fees, or navigation light fees, or lighthouse sighting fees. (well they have never asked me to help pay them after a day on the water)

 

sad thing is, most boats i have seen cost the same if not far more than your average Raaus aircraft. and far more to run.

and ASA hasnt in a seemingly totally arbitrary way locked out a whole bunch of boat ramps as being only for captains with a special endorsement to use them, even if a boat ramp 100Kms up or down the coast has the same type of boats present......... Class D

 

 

[robinsm]

Two points:

 

1. I pay the local airport owner a yearly fee of $500 to cover all my landings at that airfield instead of the $20 per landing and parking fees that are normally charged,

 

2. I recently received a bill from Raa Aus for landing fees at Taree. I have never been at this airfeild and could prove the aircraft, and myself were never there. (I was giving blood at the time at the local red cross so it is documented.). I rand up aavdata and the lady that answered the phone was pleasant, listened to me and the bill went away after a discussion. (No need to threaten them. A p..s in the pocket is worth more than a poke in the eye and gets better results most of the time).

 

 

[facthunter]

The cost of getting the money out of you has to be taken into the equation. My original bitch was the errors and the time I spent on the phone. To write a couple of letters chasing up 20 dollars doesn't make sense.

 

Aerodromes operate at a cost. There needs to be some equitable arrangement. IF the aerodrome gives a benefit to some locals they might think about kicking in. To expect it all for nothing is a bit unrealistic.. An aerodrome serves the community, but a lot of them are pretty quiet places, with not a lot going on. Are Airparks the answer? Nev

 

 

[planet47]

What airport is that? at Bankstown, what was the nations busiest GA airport, my landing fees are only $6 per landing, or a daily charge of $12. for unlimited landings in a 24hr period. and i have use of a manned control tower, nice wide perfectly maintained runways, taxiways, signage, lighting, gravel free runup bays. maintained windsocks. etc etc

 

YTRE = $10 per landing. Costs the same to land a plane with a gross weight of 250kg as it does to land a plane weighing 1.4 tonnes or a whole lot less to land a freight plane whose gross weight would probably be about 4 tonnes and somewhere inbetween to be a passenger on the local RPT. As for maintenance and gravel free areas - I remember the pot hole that I found while taxiing about 15 months ago the resulted in a bent nose leg and the pot hole that another individual found that cost him a main leg off his plane. But the twanging belligerence of the groundsman "I'd have to walk all over the place for 12 hours every day in order to ......". A little bit more care when using a tractor mower would be helpful

 

 

[68volksy]

Goulburn airport lessee currently charges $20 per full-stop in landing fees to "commercial organisations". Funny enough that is just our flying school and the new one recently started by the airport lessee...

 

There is no exemption for annual fees as there was when managed directly by Council. We used to pay $770 per year. Now we're up for close to $16,000 per year so all students and aircraft hirers now are charged the fee on top of what they'd normally pay. Not to mention we've pushed as much flying as we can to Canberra as the fees there are only $2500 per year for both landing and parking.

 

Just recently we've received bills from Avdata for "Parking fees" of $8 per day or part thereof for each aircraft that touches the grass between the runway and the hanger. Only paid parking in a 100km radius of Goulburn.

 

Lovely if we got some maintenance but there was at least a tiny little bit of poetic justice when the airport lessee's aircraft recently managed to hit one of the potholes in the taxiway and busted its prop...

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Let's draw a parallel...- what will the council do to a negative-income asset? Yep, they'll sell it developers.

We're in a User Pays Society. And i'm down with that

So with that logic, let's sell off all the schools, hospitals, fire brigades, police departments, roads, city busses, water and every other piece of social infrastructure because they don't make a profit. Hell, let's even privatise the legislature. It SURELY doesn't make a profit.

Sorry, I not only disagree with that "privatise everything" ideology, I strenuously disagree with it. I think it is why the world is so f*cked up right now. Privatisation and corporatism has gone waaaay to far already.

 

 

[Guest SAJabiruflyer]

So with that logic, let's sell off all the schools, hospitals, fire brigades, police departments, roads, city busses, water and every other piece of social infrastructure because they don't make a profit. Hell, let's even privatise the legislature. It SURELY doesn't make a profit.Sorry, I not only disagree with that "privatise everything" ideology, I strenuously disagree with it. I think it is why the world is so f*cked up right now. Privatisation and corporatism has gone waaaay to far already.

Hi Scott. Thanks for your post. I am unsure where / how my post can provoke such a response suggesting I want the above to occur. I certainly at no time suggested any of the above, and in fact I actually agree with what you've written regarding privatisation

 

Kind Regards

 

SAJ

 

 

[cscotthendry]

Hi Scott. Thanks for your post. I am unsure where / how my post can provoke such a response suggesting I want the above to occur. I certainly at no time suggested any of the above, and in fact I actually agree with what you've written regarding privatisationKind Regards

 

SAJ

SAJ: My apololgies. But I will say in my defense, that your last comment about "we're in a user pays society" and my experience talking to business people (large and small) has lead me to believe that (almost) to a man they think the world would be better if everything was run for profit, was the impetus behind my little rant.

 

 

[robinsm]

edited by Robinsm as I realise the comment I was about make assumed I really cared about the subject, and that was incorrect.

 

 

[metalman]

Rates and taxes,,,,I was under the impression that I paid these for the infrastructure to be put in place and maintained, I fly from a private field where I have to pay a fee ( about $500) per year,,,that is fair enough! BUT when I see and hear of the gross waste from councils and state and federal governments it 5hits me so damn much when some desk bound yob gets the idea to put his hands in my pocket for more,,,,,the drama at Hervey Bay over the fees was ridiculous, especially when it was worked out that it cost them more to charge and collect them than the value of them in the first place,,,,,really!

 

I have no problem with private fields charging whatever they think they can get , I can choose whether to go there or not ,but I have already paid for the council / government managed fields, boat ramps, parks and whatever else is supposed to be supplied for my enjoyment and recreation , AND it wouldn't matter a flying f*** if I was rich ( I wish) I have the right to expect something for my buck,,,,

 

I'll get back in my box now,,,someone shut the lid please!

 

 

[robinsm]

I pay $500 yr to the operator of the local airfeild for avdata exemption fees and dont have a problem with that. I do have a problem in that the maintanence of the airfield has gone to pot, possibly because the operator has realised that he can't make a profit and actually maintain the airfeild at the same time. I recently had occaision to land and take off from Mudgee in the states central west. Here we have a council owned airfield that is maintained, looks good and has no landing fees. Airfields are like ambulances and local sports fields. They are a public service. They are available in emergencies, cater for the local sporting people, and have industries that rely on them, but I defy you to get your local council to charge, at a profitable level, the local sporting groups for use of the local football, cricket ot other feilds around your town, and see local sport, both adult and kids, survive.

 

In the case of the Goulburn aerodrome, the land was originally GIVEN to the people of the city for use as an airfield by a local family. The land is now beeing leased with a sale option by the council to a private developer whos only interest in the feild is to make a profit. This arrogance is morally reprehensible. The only saving grace, at the moment, is the provisio from both the original donor, and later the local council, that it must remain an airfeild with fair and reasonable access to be granted to the public users.

 

As you can imagine, the politics and financial crap floating around for the last couple of years has been of legendary proportions. We have had threats of having hangers fenced off by the leasee because people would not pay an "access fee" to take their aircraft from their hangers to the taxiways, (this fee in most cases ran into $thousands per hanger). This operator will place a notam on a runway, or taxiway because he is to tight to get the area mowed so the grass is at an acceptable level for safe aircraft operation..

 

I would like to know where the line is between user pays, and outright usuary. We seem to be going the way of the almighty dollar where people no longer matter. Only the bottom line is important.

 

I do not have a problem paying a reasonable and fair landing fee. If the fees benefit the users, and generate a profit for the owner then that is as it should be.

 

 

[Guest SAJabiruflyer]

SAJ: My apololgies. But I will say in my defense, that your last comment about "we're in a user pays society" and my experience talking to business people (large and small) has lead me to believe that (almost) to a man they think the world would be better if everything was run for profit, was the impetus behind my little rant.

No problems :) You should hear me after a few single malts... probably why I turn off my computer before I do some damage