"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:J7NHf.762998$x96.89290@attbi_s72...
£35 landing fee for a PA28 plus mandatory handling soon bumps the cost
up. Not like when I flew into Oshkosh before Airventure last year when
I was give a ride to the museum, picked up from the museum, taken to the
restaurant and then taken back to Baslers all for nothing. I did not even
buy any gas.

The minimum landing fees are around $17 for nothing and you pay extra for
practice approaches.

So where is all this money going?

Or has it effectively eliminated most private flying, which, of course,
means they must raise the fees to protect all the make-work jobs, which
eliminates even more flying, which means they must raise the fees again,
blah, blah, blah...?

No airports in the Uk receive taxpayers money so everything they do has to
be met from they income they make whether it is through landing fees, profit
on fuel etc. No fancy grants for runway improvements etc. Some airports will
discount the landing fee if you uplift fuel but then it usually has to be a
lot.

The same applies with ATC. Airports have to pay for their own ATC. There is
no government funding for that either so again they have to charge to cover
their costs. Hence a couple of instrument approaches will set you back $50
in ATC charges.
Finally the UK CAA are required by law to not only recover their costs from
users but make a 6% return on investment. Hence when you have done all your
training, passed the checkride you have to part with $278 for them to do the
paperwork and issue the licence. This has to be renewed every 5 years for
$100.
and as I have mentioned before, I have to give the CAA £16 so that they can
verify my licence details for the FAA to then issue me with a private
certificate for free. Its a crazy world.

On top of this fuel is about $7.50 a gallon. all the tax raised on the fuel
goes into the general fund and pays for defense, welfare, roads, education
etc. None of it makes it way back to GA.

Chris