Looking here
Wikipedia
It appears that all five of the sovereign states without an airport are located within Europe.
That got me thinking. Would it be possible to organise a flyin, to a country without an airport!???!!
Does any of them have a field or surface that could temporarily be used as a runway? That would have to be news worthy for EuroGA. Organising a flyin to a country without an airport Maybe it could be covered in some of the flying magazines too, which might help promote our forum.
Looking at Andorra on the map, I wouldn’t imagine there is much hope of finding a usable field.
My memories of Monaco would suggest a similar lack of hope.
I can’t imagine what it would take to get permission to land in Vatican City, short of Jesus reappearing in public and demanding that the Pope makes it happen!
But what about Liechtenstein or San Marino?
San Marino does have a great little airfield with uphill grass strip called “Torraccia” (LIKD), visit strongly recommended. Liechtenstein did had a grass strip up to somewhere in the sixties, close to the town of Schaan.
You may have issues flying into the Vatican…even in a helicopter…
I think we’d all need to get our rotorwing rating first, LOL !
I think Andorra has a runways but it’s in Spain LESU, but we can organise a fly-in to La Cardanya LECD which is beautiful place nearby?
How about same runway in two different countries? load on US/Canada border and 2 in Switzerland (Geneva & Bale, the latter is 3 countries), also, this Oz airport sits in two time zones, they should use UTC for thir PPL logbooks
https://www.goldcoastairport.com.au/
This is an absolutely wonderful idea. Let’s make it happen :-)
Another thumbs up for La Cerdanya
Puigcerdá is nearby and a bit closer for us in the 100-120 knot club than Sicily.
Peter wrote:
We nearly did LECD here. It was cancelled due to bad wx
We should do it as winter fly-in with ski at LaMolina but maybe slope & poudreuse is not at your level ;)
Well, my idea wasn’t to fly to an airport. But rather to fly to a country without an airport!
Looks like we can rule San Marino out, as it turns out it does already have an airport.
Vatican City would be impossible to organise, even if there was enough room.
Andorra and Monaco are probably too hilly.
But what about Liechtenstein?
Frans wrote:
Liechtenstein did had a grass strip up to somewhere in the sixties, close to the town of Schaan.
I couldn’t find anything about it on Google. Probably not surprising if it was closed decades before the internet started. Does anyone know if it’s location and present condition? I wonder would it still be usable with little preparation?
Imagine for a moment, that we could arrange for the grass to be cut, any rabbit holes or mole hills eliminated and a wind sock put up and could organise a small flyin of suitably capable aircraft?!!
I would think that the first aircraft landing in Liechtenstein in over 50 years might be a news worthy event for the local media. We might get some local press/radio/tv coverage and show GA in a positive light.
But maybe we could do more. Being a small state, we might be able to get access to a very senior politician. Perhaps the minister of transport or even the prime minister. Those attending could bring a token gift from their home country (perhaps a small national symbol or popular food/treat or their national flag) to present to them as a symbol of friendship from their home land.
Such an event, apart from being great fun and showing GA in a positive light, is likely to get reported on by the GA press too and help promote our forum. It might even get some small bit of coverage in the domestic press of the countries of those who made a presentation to the premier of Liechtenstein, if the domestic press were informed about it.
“A flyin in a country without an airport.”
“The first aeroplane to land in Liechtenstein in over 50 years”
Does anyone have any knowledge or any way of finding out about this former strip in Liechtenstein? Is it still a green field? Any way of finding out if it would be useable?