mancival wrote:
As you say Perugia has a big runway and ILS, and is open till late and at night (a favorite landing place for atpl schools from Rome)
This thread is providing some fantastically useful informtion. Three cheers to the Euroga community. Mancival, I will be in touch if southern Tuscany is on the cards.
We are heading there next week for a scouting operation. As some have commented, we need to get a better idea of where we want to live first.
Learning Italian is certainly one of the key tasks. When I moved to Switzerland 20 years agoI had to learn French from scratch to get by and then technical french to supervise construction projects and to take the 7 written PPL exams. I am hoping my old brain will cope with Italian. Posso avere una birra, molto fredda, per favore!
Just to give an example of why the bigger airports should be avoided (as a visitor) in Italy…. let’s take Perugia.
This is the PPR request form. You somehow need to fill it in, and then send it to both the airport and the handling agent (max 15 days before arrival, min 10 hours before arrival!). Oh, you have to give them your credit card details, as they reserve the right to charge you cancellation fees…
It starts with 80€ for basic handling, then all the other fees (like 50€ for “fuel coordination”) come on top.
They only allow a max of 7 GA aircraft on the entire ramp, so you might get a refusal anytime…
is a 17-page document just on how the PPR process should work. Of course, this doc is only available in Italian… Just like the 137-page "airport rulebook” (granted, not all relevant for a visiting pilot).
Note: there is absolutely nothing going on at that airport.
Certainly, when being based at such an airport, things are usually a bit better (like no PPR, and no handling fee per every flight), but you get the idea.
Also, some of these things are sometimes not quite as bad in practice as they seem on paper, but some things you won’t be able to change. If I called them now and asked (in fluent Italian) if they could accept me this afternoon, they would 100% still say “deve inviarci il modulo per favore”…
On an aviosuperficie, you just rock up at the airfield, pull your aircraft out of the hangar, start up and head off to Losinj, whenever you want.
You might want to contact Ozzano LIKO for a chat. It is just outside Bologna, has a beautiful runway and facilities incl Jet-A, a restaurant, pool, and hangar. It is also a Cirrus dealer and I’ve never had problems with English there. Hangarage availability is perhaps less likely and it’s only VFR, but they might have some local insight and advice for you and your project.
If you are BASED in Perugia everything is much easier, as Boscomantico said. I believe there is a brand new P46 matrix and an experienced Maintenance Organization based there, so you should find some help with maintenance too.
I don’t know how far North in Italy you’d be prepared to move to but I remember Bolzano LIPB as a friendly airport. Good ratings to at our database here and in Skydemon. JetA. No idea about hangarage though. A bit further south is Trento LIDT which may also be a convenient place.
@aart I can help with Bolzano. Hangarage is basically not available, although I got one place. For my Bonnie its nearly 900 Euro a month, plus parking (you still have to pay for the time your aircraft is parked), plus movement charges… You get the idea. And its very far from Tuscany.
Personally I would be more worried of the combination of N-reg, non-EASA license and non resident. Depending on what genius you end up to be in touch with this could have some unhappy repercussions. I would try to find an aviosuperficie as bosco said and dort out a decent deal with the owners ..
Bolzano is nice and the town is nice too. But you won’t be getting in or out of there is less than very good wx. There is a video of the flight at the end. Same with Trento.
Bolzano has winter movement restrictions due to bizjet ski traffic.
Certified N-reg is fine. In the EU, Brussels requires EU papers regardless of aircraft reg. Some sporadic reports of extra thorough searches of N-regs in Italy… I got the “dog treatment” at Aosta but no real issues.
aart wrote:
I don’t know how far North in Italy you’d be prepared to move to but I remember Bolzano LIPB as a friendly airport.
I do like Bolzano and the Alps, but we lived in a Swiss mountain village for 5 years in the past, and now we are escaping the cold of Britain, so Tuscay, or nearby, it has to be.
lukepower wrote:
worried of the combination of N-reg, non-EASA license and non resident.
I know I will have to get EASA papers back within a year or so. I did have a Swiss PPL for 8 years, and then EASA PPL before Brexit. And I got the EASA IR added to my EASA PPL easily in Poland (based on having 200 hours real instrument time or something). N Reg will be fine.
Your best bet is Foligno LIAF. Long runway, fuel and probably quite easy to organize hangar space.
That is a great recommendation @AfricanEagle. Thank you.
We are in Tuscany this week. Found a great law firm in Florence today to help us with immigration etc etc stuff. And starting to look for accommodation tomorrow. We are going to drop into a couple of local airstrips just to to get a feel for the ‘vibe’.
