Having been into Cannes four times now….three times I have managed to get parked on the apron…..the one time not (despite my best pleas) looked like this:
Ouch. Not as bad as Calvi, though…
I’m usually put on the grass alongside taxiway Y. It’s full of bumps and some holes (not well marked), not good for a Mooney with low prop clearance. At least the grass and weeds are low. In spring the weeds and grass are very long, I need to pull out the biggest weeds before startup to clear a passage. I once had a prop leading edge dent (its wood composite) from a seed head on that parking.
Another gripe is the long walk from down near hangar 7 (where I’m most often parked) up to customs (even if you are from Shengen its quite a long way to the security gate) with no baggage trolleys. On a hot day with a pile of luggage and fractious passengers its no fun. Its all a plot to get us to ask for handling so we get transport. If you’ve got a handicapped passenger who can’t manage the long walk then you have to pay for handling.
I remember well the filthy parking at Cannes from 2005.
I think there should be a website where pilots who own their planes can report on this kind of stuff. Nobody would fly to Calvi, Corsica, for example – except as 2- or 3-up so you have the manpower to push the plane manually on and off that surface.
I remain amazed that those who have been there previously have not mentioned it. I guess if a pilot just drives onto it under power, he can’t see the enormous cloud of crap he is throwing over everybody else, but the various sized rocks are plainly visible before you get there.
Nobody would fly to Calvi, Corsica, for example – except as 2- or 3-up so you have the manpower to push the plane manually on and off that surface.
My hangar neighbor has been flying to Calvi about once every month for the last 20 years in his P210 (he only flies to Calvi and to Straubing for maintenance). With his wife or alone, sometimes a friend. It seems to be possible.
It seems to be possible.
Of course it is – it is the other planes that get covered in crap. He probably doesn’t even notice…
And if his plane is 30 years old then he won’t notice the extra scratches on his windows.
I flew into Calvi last March. The place was completely empty so I could chose the best bit to park on. I’ve got good prop clearance so don’t usually have too much trouble.
How hard can it be to install some PSP planking to even the surface and let the grass grow neatly through it? It’s Cannes after all, not like they shouldn’t want to look nice and lack the money…
Cannes (the city) is a pretty run down place. Go to the festival center, it looks like they’ll turn the next Blade Runner movie there.
I think both Cannes and Calvi are run on the “Gallic shrug” principle. As was La Rochelle before they got GA to park on the better grass surface.
This kind of thing is possible only because airports won’t pay out on damage even if totally proven unless you actually sue them, and then they will just ban you from flying there so you don’t win.
These places make so much money out of GA they could put down some tarmac.
The issue at Calvi isn’t a simple prop clearance one. There aren’t potholes so you won’t get a prop strike. What you will get is dings (my TB20 with the 3B prop has 8" / 20cm of prop clearance) and you throw a ton of abrasive sh*t over everybody else’s plane (which is everybody else’s problem, but that’s not a view I like).
