I’m planning my first flight into Spain (working my way down to the EuroGA Fly-in the long way!)
Departing Biarritz this Sunday 1st May I am planning to route: LESO (San Sebastian) ADEDI LEPP (Pamplona) LEHC (Huesca) LLEL (Sabadell)
The route passes through a lot of Class D TMAs which i am assuming will be happy for me to pass through. I am not familiar with Spain at all !
Dependent on wx and cloud I will try to fly at between 6000 – 8000ft (MSA is 5800ft) – No Oxygen and VFR.
Any help / advice / suggestions greatly appreciated.
Alex
You’ll be fine. Along the route you’ll get traffic information like you are used to. Try to speak slowly and clearly, many Spanish controllers don’t dominate English as elsewhere in Europe. Be brief on the radio. ‘Madrid, buenos dias, G-XXXX’. They’ll respond, and you’ll just say ‘G-XXXX, VFR Biarritz to Sabadell, position yyyy, altitude zzzz’ No need for aircraft type, POB, sexual preferences or whatever.
Enjoy the Southern Pyrenees, a lovely route! Weather permitting I’d fly as close as possible south of them.
Have a good flight.
Alex, would be great to catch up with you about these flights in Carcassonne, as I’m planning to continue to Spain after the Fly In! 
Enjoy the trip!
Same here, but it’s Spain and Southern France in May. It better be good WX!
Hi Alex,
Just did Muchamiel LEMU – Biscarosse LFBSlast sunday, spanish controllers were pretty relaxed and they warned us well in advance of any active Dangerous areas. They were indeed very cooperative, the previous day they even had us fly over Alicante city and airport 1000ft AGL, and we flew overhead the aiport 30 seconds after an ATR took off. Don’t really understand why they didn’t ask us to make the transit above the sea…
Please mind that every flight in spain requires to file a flight plan (maybe not local flights, but domestic flights between two airports yes), might be handy to have the phone nr of the closest commercial airport in order to file this by phone, it can save you time.
Benoit
BTW we flew the whole route at FL85, it was fine with them
benoit wrote:
Please mind that every flight in spain requires to file a flight plan (maybe not local flights, but domestic flights between two airports yes)
That is not entirely true. Spain wants to have a flight plan when you enter controlled airspace. So if one of the airports has class D airspace, then you need to file. That’s what I’ve been told but I have only experience with Sabadell LELL so far.
