I think that if I didn’t have the full TKS I would have got away with it, because the IMC didn’t actually contain much ice, but with just +3C on the ground and fairly significant terrain down the route I would have regarded myself as foolish to have done the flight.
This was the last data I got before departure
EDNY 140820Z 01007KT 6000 -RA BKN011 OVC028 03/02 Q1017
TAF EDNY 140500Z 1406/1506 03006KT 9999 BKN012 TEMPO 1406/1410 4000 -RASN BECMG 1407/1410 BKN020
The cloud tops in the IR image don’t look very high (on a rough guess, which is all one can do with IR images, given that they aren’t available for Europe with a temperature reference charts; something EUMETSAT seems to not like offering free of charge) and in the past I might have estimated them at FL100-150 which was roughly right and they slowly went lower down the route.
Interesting to relate this to the 1200Z MSLP which looks totally clean!
Just shows how much IMC you can get on a totally clean MSLP.
At that time we had 500ft OVC, maybe 2km and snow 
One amusing bit was, on the return flight, at FL150, upon entering France, French ATC asking if we were pressurised or had oxygen
I wonder what they would have done if I had given the wrong answer? Have there been issues with this?
I hope they sort out the police checks for next year, because it wasn’t just the “UK with a nasty disease” pilots who got this treatment which wastes 1-2hrs. It was the Swiss also. And the system doesn’t actually work, because anybody can lie to the minibus driver about their country of departure. And those who depart on the return flight during the show days can just walk to their plane (or catch the shuttle minibus) without being police checked, so breaking German immigration laws. I can’t remember if you can walk through the exhibition halls on the Sunday.
Peter wrote:
I hope they sort out the police checks for next year, because it wasn’t just the “UK with a nasty disease” pilots who got this treatment which wastes 1-2hrs. It was the Swiss also. And the system doesn’t actually work, because anybody can lie to the minibus driver about their country of departure. And those who depart on the return flight during the show days can just walk to their plane (or catch the shuttle minibus) without being police checked, so breaking German immigration laws. I can’t remember if you can walk through the exhibition halls on the Sunday.
I fly into EDNY frequently for business and have never seen another person in the immigration area. I think you were just unlucky.
Peter wrote:
And the system doesn’t actually work, because anybody can lie to the minibus driver about their country of departure. And those who depart on the return flight during the show days can just walk to their plane (or catch the shuttle minibus) without being police checked, so breaking German immigration laws.
Yes, it is possible to break laws. Yes, society’s functioning relies on a certain level of self-compliance, not everything being forced. To go to extremes, if a sizeable percentage of the Swiss population would just walk through the border without an ID, there isn’t that much that the German border police could do. They’d be vastly outnumbered. Even if they were willing to shoot, I don’t think that they would have enough ammunition on the spot.
The case of pilots departing EDNY is less extreme, but still, if the German State thinks it is worth the effort, there are ways to catch those that left the EU customs zone or Schengen Area without going through the checks. Just have the border police / customs officer write down in a ledger which airplanes were checked, and cross-check that against flight plans and/or radar tracks.
Yes, this can be evaded flying low “below the (civilian) radar”, transponder off, etc, and with a flightplan that lies. Yes, you can drop your contraband in the plane and go to the check without it later. Again, if it is deemed worth, just have a customs officer patrol the area on foot, looking out for such behaviour.
You know, total compliance with laws is not the state’s one and only goal, seen narrowly. The actual well-being of the population is the ultimate end goal. There a question of cost/benefit balance wrt to cost of enforcement, in money and human resources, but also in economic damage (friction added to the process), in annoying/pestering/wasting the time / restricting the liberty of the population, which the state servants are, collectively, the servants of.
So yes, the system is not perfect, by far. I’m happy the “cost/benefit” balance has been put in a much more liberal / easy on the pilot process than it could have been. Just like the UK’s GAR process allows you to land/depart “anywhere”, but makes actual enforcement of immigration laws much harder.
Sure I was just unlucky to get behind the contents of a “Russian” airliner. EDNY was relatively little airliner traffic.
Re the latest police stuff, I think it is obvious, over the years, that the airport doesn’t like the exhibition to be there. It’s a big hassle for them and they probably don’t get any money for the extra work. There has been so much open hostility from the tower, in years past… This year, what most likely happened is that the police didn’t want to allocate staff to hang around the show entrance, and since airport police have no obligation to support an airport for business reasons (look at what happened in France in 2011/2012; some airports reported a 1/3 loss of traffic but none were reinstated, not even for a scheduled Shoreham to Pontoise run) they won. In the words of the staff, they change the system every year and next year it will probably be something else again.
Timothy wrote:
flew back Sunday morning through the middle of a big patch of green on the GRAMET, and never picked up the smallest trace of ice. It was solid IMC pretty much from the surface to FL120 for the first 150nm though.
Given the forecast and having no deicing I didn’t want to risk it and left Saturday afternoon, making a big detour to the east with a stop for the night in Berlin/Schönhagen EDAZ. Then waiting for the warm front on Peter’s MSLP to pass.
Here’s a short video I’ve put together about flying to and from the show – I’ve used some of the photos that were on Telegram – hope that’s OK.
