Where in Europe can you land off airport?

Regarding the Spanish “ghost” aerodromes: a good few are mentioned on a site called www.aterriza.org , including a downloadable file in kmz format, or such. I am in a slow process of adding them to ourairports.com – which itself feeds other public sources of aerodrome information.

I understand however

• the data at aterriza.org is totally unverified
• nor is there any guarantee for its being up to date
• many runways/fields mentioned are temporary, particularly the “Fumigación” = agricultural spraying fields
• some places mentioned are no more than “here’s where to put down when options run out” – ISTR there’s a river delta mentioned as such. Some of these are labelled “emergencia”.

There are always different rules for state aircraft. Spain has a couple of Canadairs, too, for fire fighting and a seaplane base in Mallorca.

Also, in case of danger the regs go out the window. I can do a safety landing in Germany and it is forbidden to hinder me taking off again, for instance if I have to wait a front pass through or stuff like that. Only in case of an emergency you need special permission to take off again.

With my Lake I can go everywhere any motorboat can go – but just not land there or take off from there, because that involves air law and that forbids off airport landings. So I could just land in international water and watertaxi along the rivers and into the harbours. There are special seaports who all have defined runways and taxiways, despite the great nonsense of taking off with a crosswind in a seaplane on a round lake…

I heard about that too and immediately wondered about the firefighters using Air Tractors on floats.

Good question.. I am a little ashamed of myself not knowing the answer because I actually got one of them to join out Mallorcan splash-in and never wondered why the floats..They can’t scoop up water like Canadairs do. I know they are based in the Valencia area. Maybe they use inland lakes to land on to reload fire retardant on the shore. I’ll try to find out.

Peter wrote:

Re Spain, we have had posts here saying that the various “mystery runways” in Spain are used by local pilots. See this post and subsequent ones. @coolhand should know more.

No ‘mystery’ there. Spain has quite a few runways in the middle of nowhere that are used for firefighting. A good example is the AERODROMO LA RESINERA near Jayena in the mountains E of Malaga. There’s also one close to Malaga airport that serves mainly as helicopter base.

As for the Canadairs: during fire season a gaggle of them is stationed in Malaga (the live on the mil apron, W of the rwy) and they scoop the water either from the sea or from one of the numerous reservoirs in the mountains.

In addition to that you have loads of Ag strips scattered about. Many/most of these fields are referenced in the excellent book ‘Campos Eventuales’ which is published by the Spanish Air Force. Highly recommended for anyone flying in Spain. You can get it from Bucker Books (sp?) at Quatro Vientos airport in Madrid.

In Italy Campi di volo are restricted to UL or pilots in certified aircraft with a mountain rating. There is a very comprehensive map/site at avioportolano.it.

Unfortunately the AIPM Italian Mountain Rating needs an Italian Licence to go with it.

I’ve done a lot of beach walking, bit very few beach landings. Beach conditions change with wind and tide. A beach which is almost always hard can rarely have a very soft area. I’d want someone on the beach to walk or drive on it, shortly before I land.
This would not apply with bush tyres.

Do we have public land in Europe like the open range in the US where the land is owned by the federal government?

I think we do :-)

The situation in Spain has changed this year.
Before, we had, as other have explained already, airdromes/airports that can be state or privately owned, and ULM-only airfields (all private). Landing in any other place was prohibited. With the exception of forest runways, where operation of firefighting and aerial fumigation airplanes was allowed. For example, the runway in the south of Valladolid that Peter photographed.

Now there is only one division between public or restricted airports/airfields, and the only difference between both categories is that in restricted airfields commercial transport operations cannot be carried out. But it is still prohibited to land in any non-approved land. The difference now is that there is no limitation for general aviation to use what previously was called ULM fields, category that doesn’t exist anymore and now are included into the restricted airfields category.

In the other hand, there was and still there is, a restriction to ULM operations. But it is not related with type of airfield but to the airspace: ULMs cannot enter in controlled airspace. But this restriction is in process to be derogated in near future. Currently there is a draft of the new regulation that will eliminate this restriction.

LeSving wrote:

In Norway, all land that is not cultivated in some way or the other in broad terms, is public land (free for everyone). Woods, mountains, nature in general. It doesn’t matter if the land is owned by the government or is private. All of the water is also public, including the beach zone (if the land is not cultured).

I know what you mean since we have the same legislation in Sweden, but “public land” is not the correct English term as it refers to ownership. The land could still be privately owned. The English term used in Sweden for this is “Right of Public Access”. But it doesn’t apply to aircraft.