Goodwood, Bournemouth or Southampton?
Honey Mooney HB-DVN
Flemming and Angela PEDERSEN
Sun 15 Jul 2007 20:07
|
The weather from Geneva to Goodwood looked good except for the last bit
from about the middle of the channel. Both Southampton, Heathrow and
Gatwick had thunderstorms in their forecast. So about an hour and a
half before ETA, we called up Goodwood ATC (using the Iridium phone, we
were still too far for VHF) to check conditions. They said the airfield
was currently closed due to very heavy rain during a recent
thunderstorm, and that there was standing water on their grass runway.
We explored then other options, like Bournemouth or Southampton, but we
were worried about the cost of landing, handling and parking. The Southampton handling agent said it would be about 250 British pounds for landing and parking the first night, and 93 British pounds for parking each following 24 hour period!! Bournemouth was a bit more reasonable at 60 pounds for landing and overnight parking. Finally we called back Goodwood ATC about half an hour before landing. They had just opened up the airfield again, and had a couple of operations. We were advised to use the right hand side of runway 32R to avoid standing water. So we finally decided to give it a try. It worked our all right and we managed to avoid the standing water. Angela's brother was there to pick us up shortly after our arrival, and we spent a lovely evening in there house in Liss near Petersfield. |