Assuming you won’t be coming back for a “long time” what stops you just making the calls in English and flying out of there?
Will somebody block the runway with a vehicle?
I went in and out of LFAT on a non-ATS day (with a RV ILS from Lille) and there was no issue and nobody came after me. Several years ago.
Assuming you won’t be coming back for a “long time” what stops you just making the calls in English and flying out of there?
Nobody, but strictly speaking, it’s not allowed. French airfields wirh ATS (such as Toussus) are normally “french-only” outside the hours of the ATS.
He was not caught out by a sudden strike. For a while there have been days w/o ATS at LFPN and LFPT. The dates are published by NOTAM so there is no excuse for not knowing.
The reason given is lack of qualified staff because controllers have been transferred to more attractive positions (read major Parisian airports) and their replacements have not yet been rated.
My point was however that German pilots get used to operating w/o ATC really quickly. But I guess that most German pilot’s never venture abroad (like most others), so they never get a taste of that.
Germany sounds complicated.
I’m not sure how the German vocabulary translates in English, for example explaining what exactly is a “flugleiter” or where in the AIP it is stated that you cannot land on an unmanned airport, but that would be interesting to know. Especially because it seems common that the airfield is unmanned at some point.
Now, If a flugleiter makes a rant because I landed while he was having coffee with a dead battery, I would not hear it… Let’s not reverse the responsibilities. I’m responsible to not fall down of the sky and he’s responsible for answering the radio. He would be the one at fault, not me !
Some wrote France is mostly OK, I would still name the issue of overflying altitudes.
France wants to keep its overflying altitudes rules which are kind of silly and non SERA compliant.
The reasoning is that the AMC or GM to the regulation allow it, but there has been a lot of debate about it and probably France cannot keep its rules.
But it will end up in court one day…
This stuff is very useful to know about, it’s impractical to study all the local variations around SERA-land from official sources.
I have never heard of a flugleiter, for example, though I did somehow know that – unlike elsewhere – you are not supposed to land at an unmanned airfield in Germany. A few months ago, having got emailed PPR (actually a number-limited slot) to land at Pattonville EDTQ, I arrived in the circuit at about the arranged time. There was no reply to repeated calls on the radio frequency. What to do? I called Langen Info, who tried to raise Pattonville on the phone, without success. So I asked Langen in substance what did they think I should do – PPR but no radio response? I felt a little sheepish, the pilot must decide what to do – but I was just a visitor in Germany; in France or the UK I would not hesitate to land. I don’t remember the exact words used, but my understanding of Langen’s reply was to the effect that landing should not be a problem. Based on the comments above, this would have been bad advice. What a strange, strange rule!
Shortly afterwards Pattonville’s radio came back to life and Plan A was resumed.
Regarding Spain and paper flight plans, the picture Peter describes of a few years ago still persists. Recently I called into Burgos LEBG for an intended “splash and dash” fuel stop. En route to Portugal, I had filed a series of flight plans via Skydemon for the day’s legs. Refuelling was pretty quick; but to pay the landing fee I must visit the office inside the terminal building. The friendly but firm lady in the office insisted that my Skydemon flight plan was altogether unacceptable, I must file a FPL on the Spanish system. So I was obliged to cancel the perfectly valid Skydemon plan and refile exactly the same details (with a circa 30 minutes delay) so that a paper printout thereof could be produced – in order to present this to security and get back to my plane.
What an utter nonsense!
Bluebeard wrote:
What an utter nonsense!
I agree, although this seems to have more to do with who you meet than actual requirements. I used to file my Spanish FPLs via Homebriefing and 90% of the time that worked. Of course, there were the other 10%…..
Yep. I remeber filing the flighplan via Rocketroute for a departure from Santander. When I arrived at the office to pay my landing fees, the friendly lady already had the printout of my flightplan on her desk, ready to get stamped as my access ticket to the airside. Worked nicely. No mention that one would “have to file there”. But I trust it may happen, depending on who’s on duty.
Bluebeard wrote:
Recently I called into Burgos LEBG for an intended “splash and dash” fuel stop. En route to Portugal, I had filed a series of flight plans via Skydemon for the day’s legs. Refuelling was pretty quick; but to pay the landing fee I must visit the office inside the terminal building. The friendly but firm lady in the office insisted that my Skydemon flight plan was altogether unacceptable, I must file a FPL on the Spanish system. So I was obliged to cancel the perfectly valid Skydemon plan and refile exactly the same details (with a circa 30 minutes delay) so that a paper printout thereof could be produced – in order to present this to security and get back to my plane.What an utter nonsense!
I had a similar run-in @ Burgos last Winter. Utter non-sense …
But then again, that airport is a £50,000,000 joke that is paid by our European taxes !
When I got this nonsense in Spain some years ago they printed off the flight plan which I had filed via Eurofpl and pretended it was filed locally. It was duly stamped to show I paid the fees.
It is the “little man” problem. Little to do makes people feel important.
Rwy20 wrote:
Germany:
- Airport opening hours and prohibition to land outside these hours
Isn’t this just an airport decision? Surely there is no requirement in EASA regulations for a manned airport, except for scheduled commercial flight or some size limit on the aircraft or something. Avinor have lots of airports along the coast of Norway. These are commercial airports with scheduled flights. Up until last summer they could only be used during the opening ours, which is very limited with 4-5 scheduled flights a day, even days with no scheduled flights. Now they can be used all the time for day VFR thanks to pressure by NLF (Air sport association of Norway). All this is for Avinor (the owner) to decide, the CAA has nothing to do with this. All these smaller airports are soon (2-5 years) to be remotely controlled, which means they will be open 24/7 for all kinds of flights.
Other private airports can also have restrictions for other reasons, noise typically. It could be no flying, or no special flying activity (training, towing etc) after ten in the evening, or no flying before eight in the morning for instance. That is also nothing to do with the CAA or regulations, but negotiations with local politicians and people living there.
At Oppdal, ENOP, there is a tower. Normally it is unmanned. It’s manned only when the rich guys come with their King Airs. I’m not sure if the manning is a requirement by the CAA, or a requirement by the pilots, because it is sometimes crowded with gliders, parachutes and other light aircraft.
