Landing Fees
There is a letter in the Pilots to Pilots section of COPA’s January 2005 Flight newspaper which talks about the brutal landing fees charged to an owner by the Edmonton City Centre airport. The jist of the story is that two trips to the airport cost him $160.50 in his six seat aircraft. You can see the details of how the cost is determined in Appendix A of the Operations Policy document.
The response from COPA is that they have argued that the CFS should list the fees and I agree. The federal government and the airport authorities, however, do not agree, saying that “there is no reason to post the fees anywhere.” I’m not sure why they would think that. In today’s world where I have easy access to information everywhere, why should I have to pick up the phone, call long distance most likely and try and track down the landing fees? To me, that’s the equivalent of putting “Call for pricing!” in a printed advertisement. When I’m comparing prices on a product, I compare posted prices and that’s it. Ya, I might be missing out on a “super deal” but in most cases the posted pricing is as cheap if not cheaper.
When I flew to Athabasca last summer, it took me the better part of an hour to track down someone who worked for the municipality on the phone that knew how much the landing fee was; $10. Ten dollars? That amount is not even worth the time I spent tracking it down in the first place. Why wouldn’t Athabasca want that fee posted? There isn’t any other airports nearby so it’s not like I’m going to go anywhere else.
I suspect it’s the bigger airport authorities that are driving this policy. So perhaps the field should be added to the CFS but made optional. That way, if Edmonton City Centre wants to opt out, they can. Incidentally, if you ever up by Athabasca, I recommend a stop at the airport. The $10 fee is to pay for the brand new runway surface just put in and as such is the smoothest runway you’ll ever put your wheels on. And the people at Central Air are uber friendly. Oh and if you get fuel, they’ll let you park overnight for free. And if you are visiting friends in and around the Edmonton area, I recommend you skip City Centre airport and instead land at the Villeneuve (CZVL) airport and have your friends pick you up there.
If there’s enough interest (and people with fees knowledge), I’ll put together a small web app this weekend to help GA pilots keep track of fees. That way instead of wasting time trying to track down the fee information, they can just go to a single spot on the web. Thoughts?
Thu, 24 Mar 2005 03:34 Posted in Flying
