Obviously, a flight from England to Germany does not require “customs” as such. It requires police, in order to conduct a check of passports.
Many mid-size german GA airfields have an arrangement that allows the AFISO to conduct this check in lieu of a policemen. However, this often not laid down in the AD of these airport’s AIP entry. In theory, you could even have a Bundespolizist come to the airfield just for you.
How would you arrange for this and what is the cost?
As the FPL was filed EGKA-EDRT, I am sure some kind of arrangement kike those above was in place.
But again, no “customs” formailites are required.
I don’t think “Customs formalities” are often involved – except IME in some places where they actually look at your passport. Croatia used to do this 100%, in and out. What does the AFISO do that is actually different? If he doesn’t look at passports, it is all meaningless because anybody could be anybody…
Was the FPL actually filed to EDRT? Not many people are in a position to know that, and anybody at the UK end who really knows would have signed the Official Secrets Act – no kidding. Not that this has any bearing on what caused the ground impact so far from the airport…
The AFISO does look at the passport.
What is meant by “no customs formalities” is “nothing to do with the carriage of goods”.
Not 100% sure about the FPL, but usually the media would find out and there have been no news to the contrary on the media.
How would you arrange for this and what is the cost?
Not in relation to Trier but, when I fly to Ingolstadt I have to fill in a form on the airport web site giving my details and ETA and then sometimes the Bundespolizei show up and sometimes they don’t. There is no cost for this.
I wonder how they managed to be 8 meters above the ground (that’s the height they hit that pole, see the part of the wing hanging there?) 3.7 km form the runway … I mean the guy KNEW that airport and even if not that’s such a ridiculous angle to come in … I would really like to know what equipment that plane had …
Exactly. I cannot help thinking there’s more to this accident than meets the eye….
How would you arrange for this and what is the cost?
Some years ago I flew into Siegerland a number of times. Same thing – you called them with an ETA and either the local coppers showed up (they never did), or the fuelers checked your passport and, IIRC, made a note of the details. Painless.
What is meant by “no customs formalities” is “nothing to do with the carriage of goods”.
OK, I know “Customs” = “goods”, but everybody “inside” this business knows that nobody in Europe ever looks at what is being carried, except if
Except for the last item I have never been subjected to any “Customs” procedures anywhere, ever.
So none of this stuff means anything anyway…
when I fly to Ingolstadt I have to fill in a form on the airport web site giving my details and ETA and then sometimes the Bundespolizei show up and sometimes they don’t.
That is as published – Customs PNR
Peter, customs does not equal immigration!
By the way, the official accident report has come out a few a days ago.
Nothing too interesting in there. Still 38 pages (they don’t manage to put a lot of text on one single page).
The only interesting bits:
-from telephone calls made just prior to the flight, it transpired that the pilot fully exected not be able to go to Trier-Föhren, and thus expected to divert somewhere else. This makes it even more difficult to understand why in the end they tried it nevertheless… there was no realistic chance to get in with the prevailing weather.
-supposedly, this crew had in the past diverted elsewhere several times when inbound to Trier. It doesn’t seem like the passenger would likely have pressured the pilot.
Interestingly, the aircraft never made any radio call(s) to Trier Info before crashing.
Other than that, only some driwel about CRM in the report.
No CVR.
Summary: we don’t know much more than a few days after the accident.
boscomantico wrote:
Other than that, only some driwel about CRM in the report.
There is a comment on page 30, that assumes an issue could have been selecting a target altitude of 0ft MSL for the airport reference point, because the measured sink-rate coinscides with the rate a GNS430W would calculate at that point. The descend started at a point which coinscides with a three degree glide path, but with the too high sink rate. This is graphically depicted on page 37 with the 3 degree glide paths for the correct target altitude (666ft MSL) in dashed blue and the target altitude of 0ft MSL in dashed red. But because no CVR or FDR, this is purely an assumption based on the radar data.
Yes, something went wrong with his descent/approach computations. Actually, that is quite obvious… hence I didn’t even point this out again.
But, wasn’t this a zero-zero approach?
