In France – all of it, including the Cote d’Azur – you’re lucky if a 24 hour forecast comes out as predicted
While ago I complied METAR for airports in France, Cannes & Nice seems to have very predictable (good) weather,
92% of days being good VFR in Delta (2kft ceiling & 8km visibility)
9993 day out of 10000 one can operate above SVFR (1.5km & 600ft)
It’s crap down here in Paris but still manageable compared to UK 
Greece seems to offer better choice for flying weather but I imagine OP will not get excited to fly there 
To be fair, France does not have much flying restrictions, I am likely flying tonight to Melun with TnG at Pontoise after kids and wife go to sleep…
I have flown to Montreal, Canada a few times and have dealt with customs and COVID forms
I don’t want to argue with johnh’s opinions, but much of what he writes is factually incorrect.
Please tell me more. I’d be delighted to be wrong – flying in France has been pretty discouraging.
I’ve made no effort to fly IFR, so maybe if I did I’d be pleasantly surprised by the simplicity of it all. Assuming I could figure out how to renew and retain currency.
As for the rest – weather, airspace, weird national quirks of rules and regulations – that for sure is not factually incorrect.
Snoopy wrote:
Scenarios
The important takeaway from your examples is that immigration and customs are distinct in most of Europe. For international trips you may need one but not the other.
johnh wrote:
Please tell me more. I’d be delighted to be wrong
“every flight plan is a work of several days choosing routes”
“Small plane IFR is pretty much unheard of.”
“Airspace is a nightmare”
None of that is true for “Europe”. Maybe for France.
I flew back and forth across Switzerland, France and UK VFR hundreds of times in my first 5 years of flying (2002 to 2007). It is truly not that challenging. Then got my IFR and discovered my flying life got really easy. All the airspace restrictions are taken care of by the route chosen by the systems. European ATC is fine and will often give you a lot of help in the air for shortcuts etc. You can get a valid route and file a FPL in 10 minutes max with Autorouter, Rocketroute etc. You will have to have PPR for many airports, and that will be a problem in peak summer in many places. But others will be fine.
Like all of us, you have to take one little step, then another and another, and it gets easier and easier with practice.
Thank you all. This is all very helpful
I do believe at some point you have to take the leap and fly out of your comfort zone to progress as a pilot and as a person. I don’t go into things blindly and do as much planning as possible. Sounds like its best at first to file select destination airport and file IFR plan. Has anyone had experience or issues filing with Foreflight. I use foreflight exclusively here in US and find all the features very helpful. Plus, I like to think I am quite proficient with foreflight
How do you obtain Prior Permission Required (PPR) for destination airport. Just call ahead at FBO or Tower?
“every flight plan is a work of several days choosing routes”
“Small plane IFR is pretty much unheard of.”
Like I said I haven’t even tried to fly iFR in Europe. But when I see all the discussions here about what route to take, how to get a handoff between France and the UK at small plane altitudes, and all the rest – let’s say it’s not exactly encouraging. Maybe if you’ve already done it dozens of times it becomes straightforward. Certainly compared to the US – file flight plan, taxi, take off, or air file if things go bad – it’s WAY more complicated.
French airspace IS a nightmare, no question. Compared to Croatia – maybe not so bad. Maybe there are countries where it’s like the US, maybe Scandinavia? Not the UK for sure, where based on what I see here, so much as think about transiting some two-bit airport’s airspace (Norwich comes to mind) and you may as well shred your certificate on the spot.
Has anyone had experience or issues filing with Foreflight.
Make sure the aircraft and ICAO equipment is set up correctly in FF and then filing works well!
VFR use Foreflight to scout the airspaces, IFR is more „straight forward“ so to say.
Check airports.euroga.org and use google translate for www.fliegen-in-frankreich.de
How do you obtain Prior Permission Required (PPR) for destination airport. Just call ahead
Google airport website and call / email.
The term FBO translates to „handling company“ in Europe, which is what airlines/biz jets use and is often very expensive (eg an extreme example: comfortable „handling at LATI is a 600€ fee + landing fees on top, while entering one’s details on the airport website is free and saves this 600€ fee). In many cases handling isn’t mandatory for smaller planes. If it is mandatory often a particular company (eg IBERIA in Spain) must offer heavily discounted service.
