How bad can an instructor be? (a badly planned trip via the Balkans, and border crossing issues in Europe)

Mooney_Driver wrote:

To my knowledge, there are two exceptions to the Schengen rule: Switzerland, which is Schengen but not EU and therefore needs customs and Greece

For Greece they are in CU but not acting on it as of today, you can understand it from smuggling concerns as they are geography in the corner of the EU, but also for historical reasons where they had to carry EU regulatory checks on anything coming from North, East or South, especially, from big trade partners ex-Yugoslavia,Turkey, Ukraine, eastern bloc (now most of them have some sort of alignment with EU), I don’t think much of it will change for GA going further

Mooney_Driver wrote:

We have tried in Switzerland to get freed from customs for GA but got nowhere, primarily as most airfields do have an arrangement that you can use them for customs with PPR. There is no legal base for that either. Switzerland has border cross points everywhere also for road and other tourists, so it is not discriminating GA.

For Switzerland they are not in CU, their concern on not joining CU was mainly to protect local agricultural products from surrounding European countries (as long as you don’t have cows/cheese, les douaniers will not care ), still there is nothing special or discriminating in it in the sense of GA vs Car (although gliders can cross the Geneva lac without a FP or Custom notification and you can have one ski pass for both Chambery/Avoriez, I guess no legal basis for both )

France had a suspension of schengen, that is a different story than customs

But practically, do you still need a Swiss custom declaration for a flight France to Italy while overflying Switzerland? say going to EuroGA fly-in to Venice

I can’t find anything in Swiss ENR sections, only in AD sections

During our Friedrichshafen meet-up I landed in Konstanz (DE) but stayed overnight in Kreuzlingen (CH). There was no border control between Germany and Switzerland. Anyone could walk across.

a_kraut wrote:

I guess they (advanced UL with mandatory radio) are perfectly legal. If not, the pilots probably wouldn’t be concerned to much. Europeans definitely have more rules to obey to than Americans, but they appear to have an entirely different attitude towards rules than Americans …
Synopsis european UL regulations 2012

The fact that you or anybody has to guess is revealing it itself. You’re correct that American aviation regulations tend to be simple, understandable and people tend to follow them or fight to get them changed.

Thank you again for the useful information!

Dimme wrote:

There was no border control between Germany and Switzerland. Anyone could walk across.

If you’d ever like to do some people smuggling between CH and EU, I’d recommend a cross border Swiss Postbus for the same reason, plus they can carry more contraband

Places like Umbrail Pass (which may still have a section of dirt road) have had unmanned border checkpoints when I’ve been through, then when leaving CH you might go through a big fancy checkpoint. It seems inconsistent.

The border crossing:

Ibra wrote:

But practically, do you still need a Swiss custom declaration for a flight France to Italy while overflying Switzerland? say going to EuroGA fly-in to Venice

For overflight? No. And you never did.

It is not discriminatory but it was a let down after the vote to adopt Schengen, as many people did not realize at the time what Schengen stood for. The argument was that they should treat the flight plan as customs request and then the police should decide if they come or not, as opposed to todays practice where you have to fill in an online form most of the time before the flight. But you are right, today if you cross the border by car you usually have a checkpoint. Whether it is occupied or not, is a different story, but you can be checked anywhere around it.

We can live with this mostly. Where it gets difficult is for extra-Schengen flights. Most airfields only have customs clearance but no immigration facilities, which means if you want to fly Extra Schengen then you need to use one of the larger airports which are full AoE’s.

Peter wrote:

You can get one ski pass for zermatt and cervinia ….

Will be interested to know which side is the cheapest as well

I remember with my wife we had a bit of fun (and stress) getting a cheap car rental and returning it back at EuroAirpot which serves 3 countries, we had 3 back and forth between St-Louis, Basel and German side,

I will be curious to know how things operationally work (two ATC? one authority?) for an aircraft operating on airports shared between countries?

Examples,
- Geneva is 50/50,
- EuroAirport is 33/33/33, had a funny car rental return experience on this one
- Gibraltar seems 100/0, but Spanish car road cross its runway
None of these is GA accessible tough,

FYI, for those who are curious Coolangatta Airport in Oz has two time zones for each runway threshold, luckily flight times are in UTC

Geneva and Basle do have GA. Basle more than Geneva but both are accessible.. Geneva has slots, Basle does not.

Good to know, I guess no training around just based aircrafts from private owners and bizjets?