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Crowdfunding launched by German/Swiss AOPAs to help rescue a retired pilot from bankruptcy due to German customs decision

Peter wrote:

If an individual airport in an AIP says “cust” then that means customs is available, per conditions specified. That is pilot due diligence discharged, no matter how one shakes it.

Be careful next time, it could mean “CUSTody”

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

I would like to add some info about the German airports on the Liste B, as I am based at one of them, Nordholz-Spieka (EDXN). Note that the airfield is not to be confused with NAS Nordholz (ETMN), the civilian part of which is called Sea-Airport Cuxhaven/Nordholz and is on Liste A.

There are many flights between EDXN and Heligoland (EDXH), which is part of German territory, but not part of the customs area. To not have each and everybody call customs all day, the customs office allowed traffic between “third countries” and EDXN subject to certain conditions:

  • The goods transported are for private consumption and within the value threshold for duty-free-travel.
  • People who fly on a regular basis are subject to the same, lower threshold as commercial aircrew.
  • We have been given a poster with the detailed regulations on the type and amount of goods allowed and have to display it prominently and point it out to pilots and passengers.
  • If anyt doubts or suspicions exist or someone is non-cooperative, call the customs office immediately.
  • Customs may appear at the field without prior notice during operational hours and do random checks.
  • At least once a year, they take a copy of our airfield log where all movements are recorded with date, time, POB, registration, departure and destination airfield and search it for abnormal/ suspicious activity.

This works quite well for us, although most traffic goes to and from Heligoland, the occasional flight to and from UK, Switzerland and Norway happens. Whenever in doubt, we call the customs office and tell them about the arrival. Most of the time they aren’t too interested.

As I understand it, we (EDXN) are not part of Liste A, because the fields listed there are public airfield with an obligation to be open during the published hours and to accept any plane that can technically and legally land there.
We are a “special airfield” and do not have to be open to the public and could deny landings at will, based on property rights, even though we hardly ever did this. But because of that possibility, we are not considered as permanently and publicly available, hence List B.

Last Edited by CharlieRomeo at 15 Oct 06:23
EDXN, ETMN, Germany

Jacko wrote:

@lionel,
With regard to your detailed analysis in post no. 38, the European Commission states prominently and unequivocally that no customs formalities are required for temporary admission of means of transport.

Does that alter any of your conclusions?

That post is a translation / summary of the Münich Financial Court decision. It doesn’t contain any of “my conclusions”, except for broad comments like that in tax cases, the burden of proof is low for the state and high for the taxpayer, which I stand by.

Note that if an international treaty or other rule of European or German law could have “saved” that Swiss pilot, but was not invoked in front of the court, in some/most jurisdictions, the court has no obligation (and is actually forbidden, unless the rule is a “public order one”, in which case it has the obligation) to raise it on its own.

ELLX

Frans wrote:

@italianjon: Please, don’t get confused by infomation from individual airfields. As described by a few others in this topic before, Schengen has clearly nothing to do with customs. Schengen has to do with immigration and about free movement of people. In Germany, the “Bundespolizei” is responsible for immigration. Customs has only to do with goods and with EU and non-EU. Switzerland is Schengen, but not EU, so you need customs, but don’t need immigration. UK for example is EU, but not Schengen, so you need immigration, but not customs. I can’t make it easier to understand.

Hi Frans, I was pointing out that there is gross confusion whether Schengen has anything to do with Customs and not, and using an individual website to illustrate my point. I do understand the Schengen/Non-EU – Immigration/Customs thing. But I was lucky, in that I had been through a tedious process of importing my trailer so got to learn about the subtlety of the Schengen/Non-EU issue, for lay-people. The issue is that many of us are not Customs nor Immigration lawyers and rely on the AIP, published by the state authority, as a source of information. Unless I had had my experiences, I too would have reviewed the AIP and then flown, probably exactly as the pilot in question did.

I do agree that Schengen has nothing to do with customs, but Schengen does have a meaning, and for a statement like “Customs is PPR from Non-Schengen countries” in an AIP, well, this is an authority publishing misleading information. Yes, the court should highlight the error and bring the correct ruling, but surely on appeal the appeals court should cancel the penalty and produce a ruling that the authorities are to publish less ambiguous information, and take more care over wordings.

We live in the information age, but we are overloaded with information, and this makes it hard to understand which documenation has precedence and in which situation.

EDHS, Germany

@Jacko: Interesting stuff, that should be send straight to the German customs. If it doesn’t help this poor Swiss guy, than it could protect others from such a “rip off”.

CharlieRomeo wrote:

There are many flights between EDXN and Heligoland (EDXH), which is part of German territory, but not part of the customs area.
As far as I know, Heligoland has an exception status. You can fly from/to Helgoland from/to all German aerodromes, without calling customs in advance. I’ve called our HZA for that, and they confirmed that I don’t need any customs clearance from Helgoland. In fact, at least one customs officer is based on the airfield of Helgoland. I had also the change to meet that officer, he was just sitting around. From/to other countries, the situation is different. I know that the Dutch authorities require a customs clearance from/to Helgoland. I assume that this counts also for other countries.

CharlieRomeo wrote:
At least once a year, they take a copy of our airfield log where all movements are recorded with date, time, POB, registration, departure and destination airfield and search it for abnormal/ suspicious activity.
This is something customs does on every airfield, at least in our area of HZA Bielefeld. We do have the same check every year, but we don’t offer any customs clearance on request-basis nor do we have some “special agreements”. If you want something, the pilot has to contact customs by himself and organize an “Einzelbefreiung”. And yes, we are as a “Verkehrslandeplatz” on that B-list, which actually means nothing.

EDXN has clearly an “O/R” entry in the AIP, which means you offer a potential customs clearance.

italianjon wrote:
I do agree that Schengen has nothing to do with customs, but Schengen does have a meaning, and for a statement like “Customs is PPR from Non-Schengen countries” in an AIP, well, this is an authority publishing misleading information.
The AIP mentions two different phonenumbers. One for immigration and one for customs. It is the responsibility of the pilot to call the correct authority. I know, this is really mean and misleading, but I don’t see an real error in the delivered information.

italianjon wrote:
We live in the information age, but we are overloaded with information, and this makes it hard to understand which documenation has precedence and in which situation.
Fully agree on that. However, we pilots should not be to naive to trust one source. I’m always reading other sources, before I go somewhere, where I need immigration or customs clearances. It’s said to say, but you can’t allow any mistake on those topics, especially not with customs.
Switzerland

we pilots should not be to naive to trust one source

Indeed, but look at this from the POV of a foreign (non German) pilot who is not familiar with the extremely subtle intricacies of the German customs environment.

EuroGA has been running for over 7 years, has a vast number of German readers and participants, yet this is the first time this issue has been exposed.

Any reasonable pilot would regard

  • a “cust” in the AIP, and
  • the airport manager saying “ok”, and
  • the police saying “ok”

as wholly sufficient due diligence.

On many occassions I was unable to contact the numbers in the AIP (no reply / hang up when they hear a foreign language / etc) and the airport arranged the stuff. This case shows that you cannot rely on that. If you get entrapped like this Swiss pilot, everybody including the local police will wash their hands of you.

I wonder why this doesn’t happen much more often?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

our airfield log where all movements are recorded with date, time, POB, registration, departure and destination airfield

Slightly off topic, but is there any non-totalitarian country in the world where there is a statutory requirement to keep and produce such an airfield movement log?

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom

I suspect many national CAAs force airports to keep such logs.

In the UK, licensed airports are required by the CAA to log movements.

On some occassions I know about, this has been useful with tax investigations, where HMRC alleged that you were claiming expenses for business flights which you could not prove

Whether this logging requirement exists in the primary legislation (the Civil Aviation Act), would be an interesting Q

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

I suspect many national CAAs force airports to keep such logs

For NAA licensed airports: isn’t that an aerodrome manual (EASA) requirement?
For strips, usually to show 28 days things or restrictions on planning permission?

Paris/Essex, France/UK, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

Indeed, but look at this from the POV of a foreign (non German) pilot who is not familiar with the extremely subtle intricacies of the German customs environment.
Agree, but in that case, I would fly to official international airports only. I did that this summer as well for my adventures from/to Norway and Croatia, without any knowledge of this incident. There are possibilities to clear customs and/or immigration from smaller aerodromes, but using international airports is just straightforward without the risk of doing something wrong. And the airport fees are mostly very moderate.

Peter wrote:
If you get entrapped like this Swiss pilot, everybody including the local police will wash their hands of you.
Again, police is not customs. They don’t have any knowledge of customs regulations. I remember that a friend of mine was driving a German registered car in the Netherlands, which is not allowed if you’re registered citizen in the Netherlands, because of vehicle registration tax regulations. He was stopped by customs during speeding, and he was afraid of getting a ticket, but the customs was only interested in his registration. He had to pay the tax immediately, he couldn’t, so the car got confiscated until he imported the car legally into the Netherlands with Dutch plates. Later on, he was driving the car of his German wife in the Netherlands, and was now stopped by police. He feared for the car again, but the police wasn’t interested on that matter at all. He just had to pay a small ticket for speeding. This little story shows perfect the different games of customs and police.
Last Edited by Frans at 15 Oct 12:45
Switzerland
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