Flight plan within France

No flight plan required for VFR within France. Also, of course no customs required for flights within France. Yep, looks like Beziers thought you were coming direct from the UK.

Only exception is currently Colmar, for which there is a weird NOTAM out.

Also FPL required if you cross water.

As Boscomantico wrote, no flight plan required for domestic flights within France.

For clearing customs, apart from Cherbourg and Le Touquet you can also consider Dinard, Deauville, Caen, or Rouen. I think Dinard must be particularly convenient since they have customs 07-19 Z every day of the week (unless there is a NOTAM out to the contrary) AND AVGAS. Deauville also has reasonably good opening hours for customs (no PN), Caen requires only 2 hours PN on weekdays but prior workday for weekends. Le Touquet requires 2 hrs PN. Rouen requires 6 hrs PN.

Beware that the operating hours of these airports are frequently modified by NOTAM. For Cherbourg for example, AIP says weekdays 07-1830 and 07-17 on weekends. NOTAM says MON-THU 0730-17, FRI 0730-13 and SAT 08-17 (SUN CLSD)

Is there not a requirement to file a flight plan if one intends to cross controlled airspace? Of course, that could always be done as an “abbreviated flight plan” filed per R/T just before entering said airspace.

Jan_Olieslagers wrote:

Is there not a requirement to file a flight plan if one intends to cross controlled airspace? Of course, that could always be done as an “abbreviated flight plan” filed per R/T just before entering said airspace.

You need a clearance, and in the process of obtaining that you air-file an abbreviated flight plan containing origin, destination, type of aircraft, current position, altitude and intentions. Some will also ask you POB. I do not know about any places in France that require a filed flight plan prior to departure for VFR flight in controlled airspace.

In France you must file a flight plan before your flight if
1 You intend to cross a border, not filing is an offence (you must file one hour before off block time);
2 You plan to fly over a large body of water (beyond gliding distance) or a designated area;
3 All or part of your flight might be at night (unless local flights in the vicinity (<=12km or within CTR or ATZ) of the airport);
4 All or part of your flight might be under IFR, even out of controlled airspace (btw IFR is forbidden in France below 3000ft AMSL)

Talking about flying VFR in France, how would you plan your routing? I heard someone say that if you file airways, you can basically free yourself of a lot of hassle with regards LF-Rs or similar. As an example, say I want to fly EDDR to LFLU would you just file VFR and look for clearances for each of the many LF-Rs you fly towards (and who would you call to get such clearance – the local FIS (e.g. Strasbourg Info for L-FR164A / LF-R164B / LF-R164C close to LFGY)?

However I hate planning and simply assuming I’ll get clearance, I always try to formulate a plan for something I know that if push gets to shove, I’ll get through. But in that particular corner of the world it could mean potentially a lot of climbing and descending to avoid the LF-Rs. So would simply filing a plan using airways at, say, FL55 be guaranteed to get me to my destination, with less hassle, even if that airway crosses an LF-R up to, say, FL65? Or am I still obliged to gain a clearance to cross the LF-R?

We often cross France from east to west, passing many of the restricted areas. And I use different strategies. On weekend, starting friday at 3 PM I do file a VFR flightplan with the most direct routing. A clearence to cross the areas in flight ist normally not an issue at all.
During the week, when filing VFR I use also the most direct routing but between FL 65 and 95. Most of the time no problem with the clearences to cross.
IFR flightplans I normally use depending on weather, but I do never get a shortcut crossing the Paris aera. So this means to follow the airways passing Paris in the south. So going east to west VFR I would not file a plan following the airways. I recommend the direct course and talk to the controllers.

The idea is not so much “airways” (a rather “UK PPL” term used to scare student pilots into not busting CAS ) but the airspace class, and France has a load of predefined routes, mostly VOR-VOR based, in its Class E airspace, which avoid the prohibited etc areas. These have a base of say FL065 and go all the way up to FL115 (for VFR) or FL195 (for IFR).

I did most of my pre-IR long VFR trips using these Class E routes. There is a description of the general idea at the end of here.

It’s also true that one can cross a lot of French CAS and restricted areas with an ATC clearance. But you never quite know which bit they won’t let you cross. One example is here on the Bergerac-Lucca leg which was flown VFR for the benefit of my PPL passenger, where the airspace was really complicated, and where I got cleared through it – except one bit which was really unexpected and which required a very good moving map GPS and keeping an eye on it and talking to ATC all the time, and I expect with the transponder ON too.

So, like a lot of things, it works great… until it doesn’t

So would simply filing a plan using airways at, say, FL55 be guaranteed to get me to my destination, with less hassle, even if that airway crosses an LF-R up to, say, FL65?

No; that Class E route has a base of FL065 as shown on the SIA chart e.g.

Below FL065 (in this case) you are not on that route.

These Class D/E routes are great for long distance flying in France but they still don’t give total assurance from conflicts. For example you can have military activity or a parachute drop, etc, and ATC will advise of that. If you plan a Eurocontrol IFR route, it may avoid some of this but France (like many countries) doesn’t pass all the required info to Eurocontrol…

So, while not a complete solution for a “self-planned flight” application, these routes remove a lot of the hassle which you get with working out massively complicated airspace in some areas of France.

My impression from speaking to many French pilots, however, is that they don’t use them, and do their short local flights (the bulk of GA activity in most countries) way down, 1000-2000ft. I have never seen another aircraft on these routes and don’t recall ever encountering a conflicting aircraft on the radio. And never seen one on TCAS.