Airfield reviews: Frankfurt Egelsbach and Konstanz

Frankfurt in the distance, us doing the very large circuit required by Egelsbach.

Frankfurt Egelsbach is I believe the busiest GA airfield in Germany.  It is close to Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany and has a good runway.  On approach our GPS freaked out by all the different airspaces and shut down, which is always inconvenient as we were working on the GPS, not on charts and  swapping at short notice isn't so easy.  ATC vectored us in, which was most kind.

Taxi-ing in

Nice looking tower

We fuelled and then tried to park at a logical place nearby.  So the tower sent out a flunkey to tell us that the tower wanted us 3m to the left and closer to the taxi-way.  OK.  Whatever makes you happy.  (Later we saw someone forget to turn of the master switch when about to fuel - visible by his navigation lights still flashing, wow did he get screamed at).   We had lunch.  Vincent kindly invited us.  It was overpriced and poorly conceived - I give you breadcrumbed sausage slices with mustard foam - German food pretending to be pretentious French food.  Then when we went to leave it turned out that out stop would have taken more than 2h so we were charged €6 for parking plus the €14 for landing.

Egelsbach: Seeing Vincent (plasticpilot) 10/10
Value 0/10
Friendliness 0/10

Coming in to land at Konstanz

Konstanz is a very different airfield.  For the last few decades they have been struggling for their existance with 5 or 7 year contracts from the local government, which makes it impossible to invest in the airfield and develop it.  The airfield is a really nicely tended grass strip of around 800m, in a more marshy part of town, as evidenced by the swarms of mosquitos that appeared around dusk.  The location is fantastic as it is so close to town, so it would be a real pity if it weren't to continue to exist.

The tower is very helpful and friendly (they gave us tips on castles to fly around) and really I cannot recommend it enough as a destination.  Landing around €6, parking around €4 per day.

Konstanz: location 9/10
Value 7/10
Friendliness 10/10