Lyon bron LFLY is great. 24hr access (PCL and exit through rotating door). You can rent a car at St Exupery LFLL which is a short uber ride away (or 50 euros in a taxi because you need to pay them both ways). Then took me 1h40 to drive to Alpe D’Huez (there might be closer resorts but I basically only go to that one when I fly myself).
In Grenoble Isere, you are much less likely to find car rental / transportation. At St exupery LFLL, car rentals run until midnight every day of the week.
The other day I planned a flight last minute about 1h30 before planned take off time, called st exupery customs (they do Bron, which has a much longer notice on paper) and said I was in an SEP, just myself in the plane. They took my details and said I was fine). Ended up not landing there because diverted to Southend due to engine problems.
You have Rental car in Grenoble Isere (LFLG). Just book it and give a them a call If you are not on their openning hours, they will leave the contract and keys at the general aviation office…
Romain
That’s great to know, thanks Romain. Will have to check the rest of out of hours details (last time I checked was 3 years ago). I typically leave after work and land around midnight, so need
- accommodating immigrations / “police des frontieres”
- rental that can leave key somewhere (Valence would do)
- being allowed to land at that time (can’t in toussus for instance)
- lights
- being able to leave the airport.
I generally found out a little chat over the phone often deals with the first case (even for things not on paper), and the last 3 also not too hard, but rental is often an issue at that time. I’ve used Drivy (which is like Airbnb for cars, you rent someone’s private car)
I made in mistake in the ICAO code for Grenoble Isere. It’s LFLS off course.
For your type of flight it’s might don’t work…
-ATC close at 20:00 UTC and general aviation terminal also (they provide the keys of rental car).
-You have PCL and can land anytime and go out of the airport (but can’t come back).
One stupid thing is that you can’t shoot any approach when no ATC you have to land VFR…
Romain
… Well, not quite. You can fly the instrument appraoach, but you then have to circle visually before landing (unless the “parameters” have been previously received)…
Relatively often you have STAP For automatic parameters, but to my knowledge the don’t send the runway in use, only air paramers / cloud / vis. Not sure if that’s good enough to avoid doing the circling.
On every chart, they specify don’t use outside ATC hours…
Romain
OK understand, you meant LFLS specifically…
Yes, there is a handful of such places in France. Mende is another one. I think it has to do with no H24 airport being sufficiently close by to be able to give pilots a proper QNH and no STAP being available either.
I don’t think there are good chances of good snow in the Alps anywhere soon. Massive high pressure for at least one more week.
It didn’t snow the whole week I was in the alps (it was great flying weather), but still made up for great skiing. Unless you want powder or moguls. If like me you have fun turning like on a rail and leaving a carving mark in the snow, then it’s probably a nice time to go because you’ll have the resort just for yourself.
