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

Sorry for confusing you. I wnted to express that you don’t need to talk to anyone over the radio – except for takeoff and landing. There are airports in germany which you can use if the tower is not manned. There has to be a person who knows how to call the emergencies and how to use the fire extinguisher then-but no radio.
You can fly perfectly legal criss-crossing Germany without any relevant detour and without talking to anyone. Avoiding controlled airspace then goes without saying.

Thanks for that clarification, much appreciated.

MedEwok wrote:

Inside the common travel area of Schengen there are no customs or immigration issues for travellers on foot, by car or even by CAT

Schengen has exactly zero to do with customs.

Silvaire wrote:

The flight plan issue is important even if (unlike me) you have no problem with mandatorily telling somebody everywhere you go for no particular legal reason, and telling them when you arrive or not. The importance is that once light aircraft don’t have to file flight plans, nobody in the real world is going to be able to restrict international ultralight movements – which I think would be beneficial to all concerned, not least the European light aircraft industry.

Few people I know (none to be exact) are restricted by flight plans, transponders or radios. As a microlight instructor on a towered airport in controlled airspace, those things are in fact why people come to us instead of learning to fly at some strip without radio or ATC. People who have flown for 20-30 years come to us to learn this, because they are bored of flying only to small strips.

Nothing in the real world has today restricted the “international ultralight movements”. Flight plans, radios and transponders extends it further, and it’s funny how you try to make the opposite claim The small aircraft business is a peculiar industry. The “ultralight movement” started out with garden chair variety aircraft. Then the 912 came, and suddenly much better performing aircraft could be made, surpassing a typical 172/Cherokee. Today with the 915 and 600 kg, we suddenly have Lancair/RV performance, and the price tags keep going up. It isn’t that many years ago since 50k was “insane” for a microlight. Today 150k is “normal”. Still, if you want to fly in a simple plane, no radio, no FP, you can do so. But it’s not there the industry is headed, it’s the exact opposite (for better or worse).

LeSving wrote:

Few people I know (none to be exact) are restricted by flight plans, transponders or radios. As a microlight instructor on a towered airport in controlled airspace, those things are in fact why people come to us instead of learning to fly at some strip without radio or ATC.

Am I to assume those people are regularly using their microlight aircraft to cross international borders in Europe, which would be relevant to this discussion? Would (for example, using my proposed utilization from Germany) 75% of flights in those aircraft cross international borders? If so would they regularly fly within a large number of European countries? Is that what you are teaching them to do?

The type of aircraft produced by the UL industry is irrelevant, it is the legal basis for their operation that is relevant, and any associated legal limits on international operation. I am therefore not “trying to claim” anything or even discuss current UL production trends within the category.

My hangar-buddy flies his UL regularly to Poland. You find German UL everywhere in the neighboring countries. You often hear foreign UL aircraft at the German FIS-frequencies. None of the UL-pilots I know restrict themselves from flying abroad for whatever legal reasons, don’t know about Switzerland though. IMO it is the lack of language skills that sometimes keep them here. I have the impression that the percentage of pilots with at least acceptable English language skills is higher among pilots who fly only certified planes than among pilots who only fly UL. A very large proportion of pilots fly both.

Thanks for that. I would agree about the language barrier. I had a really nice time socializing with Italian UL pilots when I flew a Tecnam there, and in general the biggest issue they discussed in relation to getting a PPL versus the Italian national UL license is English language proficiency (I speak very basic Italian)

a_kraut wrote:

You often hear foreign UL aircraft at the German FIS-frequencies. None of the UL-pilots I know restrict themselves from flying abroad for whatever legal reasons

Very interesting, and obviously not surprising.

It means little but I haven’t seen for example an Italian registered UL aircraft during my relatively short visits to German airfields. Given the following, if they are in Germany are they filing flight plans to get there and are they legal within Germany in terms of airworthiness certification?

a_kraut wrote:

Netherlands, France, Tchechia, Italy, Austria: flight plan

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

MedEwok wrote:

Inside the common travel area of Schengen there are no customs or immigration issues for travellers on foot, by car or even by CAT. Why should GA be an exception? The answer cannot be “smuggling” or “illegal immigration” or “terrorism” because all of these don’t really need GA as amply demonstrated in the past few years.

In most Schengen countries exactly that is also what happens. There are exceptions and those have to do with Customs, not Schengen, which is purely immigration! That is something people keep forgetting and it is also something politicians did lie or mislead about when Schengen was introduced.

To my knowledge, there are two exceptions to the Schengen rule: Switzerland, which is Schengen but not EU and therefore needs customs and Greece, which have a law regarding airplanes needing customs as well. Both therefore demand airports of Entry.

The other exception was France, which in recent years had several times suspended Schengen. This is part of the Schengen agreement, that Schengen can be suspended. Not nice, but that is the law.

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.