Having flown with a Redhill-based 'syndicate' for 17 years, I was looking to broaden my flying horizons with a faster and more-modern aircraft.
Although syndicate ownership can be great for keeping down costs, these inevitably rise as the aircraft ages and there is also quite a high administrative workload.
I had therefore reached the point where I just wanted to fly the aircraft, pay the money and walk away.
Initially, I looked around at London-area flying clubs who all seemed to charge about £130 per hour for a Piper Warrior or similar which didn't really offer any performance advantage over the Fuji FA200 which I had flown for a dozen years at Redhill.
I then read an interesting Sunday-newspaper article about Sue Virr who, having been a jockey for a number of years, had re-trained as a Flying Instructor and then relocated to France where she breeds dogs and horses, provides holiday accommodation and still manages a heavy workload of flying training with the Aéro-club de Limoges and a couple of smaller establishments.
What immediately struck me about this article was the price of the flying—it was about 60% of the UK cost which easily compared to the realistic cost of flying with our syndicate but with none of the financial risks.
And it's not just the flying costs which are lower—there are no landing fees at Limoges for 'based' aircraft compared with £17.50 a pop when I last flew from Redhill.
Indeed, typical French landing fees are around €5 if they can be bothered to collect them—except for places like Le Touquet and Deauville where they rather 'see the Brits coming' but still charge less than many UK airfields.
The other big difference with flying out of Limoges is a 2500 metre runway with full facilities including ILS and an excellent radar service—indeed, there is good low-level radar cover pretty-well everywhere in France.
In my experience, all French Air Traffic Controllers speak good English and language is only an issue when flying into uncontrolled airfields.
Limoges has half-a-dozen Ryanair, FlyBe and Air France flights a day but the private flyers have free reign for the rest of the time.
In France, there are many airfields of this standard which serve the local community and also welcome private flyers—Limoges itself is very well placed for flying to anywhere in France and beyond.
In nearly three years with the club, I have flown about 85 hours on a variety of aircraft including the Robin DR400-140, Robin DR400-180 and the Diamond Star DA40 which is a brilliant machine.
Destinations have included La Rochelle (several times) Carcassonne, Bergerac, Périgueux, Arcachon, Potiers, İl D'Yue and a number of smaller airfields.
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