The journalAviation
August, when the Mediterranean is full
The aircraft is not busier in August because people have become more extravagant. It is busier because the airports have not grown, and the month has.
2 min
August concentrates the European summer into a few fields: Nice, Olbia, Ibiza, Mykonos, sometimes Geneva for those still coming down from the mountains. The runways are the same length they were in May. The number of people who want to land on a Saturday morning is not. Private aviation in August is less about comfort than about a slot that still exists.
A party that decides on a Thursday to fly on Saturday is asking the month to be reasonable. The month will not be. The brief for an August movement should exist before July ends, with a preferred field and a second field, and with a latest hour that still counts as the same day.
Positioning is the hidden day
The aircraft has to be somewhere the night before. That somewhere is often not where the party is. A jet that spent July in the Gulf does not appear over the Riviera by wishing. The empty leg is a day of someone’s time, and it should be named. So should the return. August outbound is easy to imagine. The return, two weeks later, is when everyone else is also trying to leave.
Split parties are common and badly handled. One half of a family wants to stay, the other has a meeting in London on Monday. Two movements, written as such, are simpler than one aircraft trying to be fair. Fairness is not an airport procedure.
What to accept about August
There will be delays that are not anyone’s failure. A field will hold departures. A handler will be slow because every handler is slow. The stay absorbs this if the residence is ready, the car is already at the field, and no one has planned a dinner for the hour of landing.
Used this way, an August flight is the calmest hour of a crowded month: a cabin, a known arrival, and a door at the other end that is expecting you. Used as a last-minute rescue, it is just another queue, conducted at altitude.
