There is a private airport situated in the middle of Spain, 80 miles south of Madrid. It cost 1 billion Euro to build. This airport has a great long runway (4km, about 6 times the length of my local grass strip at Popham) and a large and modern terminal building, pictured right, which can easily handle several thousand passengers per day. However as you can see from the photo, there were no passengers. In fact other than the daily RyanAir flight (and no nasty comments please, one of my mates is a first-officer on RA and I know is reading this) there were no flights today. Other than Toro 810!
Taxying in, I was advised to proceed to Alpha ramp, stand 207. STAND 207? Can they not see that it's just a 2 seater? Anyway, I proceeded to stand 207 opposite the main terminal, where a marshaller was waiting!! I've never been marshalled in my life before. So I tried to remember the marshalling instructions (mostly learned from watching the Airplane movie as a kid), and duly shut down engines (sorry, the engine, plus of course 'doors to manual') at stand 207. To the left is the ramp, and you might just be able to see the Cessna 150 next to a PC12.
Then an air-conditioned shuttle bus arrived and took me across the apron and into the terminal. Through security and the 'crew only' door I was then escored to the flight planning centre where I filed the return flight plan and paid the hefty landing fee.
So what did they charge me for all this? 14 Euros. I figure that if they charge 14 Euros per landing and get 2 aircraft (and that's a good day) then the airport will be paid for in about 3.5 million years.
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