This is the part where they impounded his airplane.
Yes, it is very negative and it should be a warning for everyone flying into Germany with their own airplane. Either use only airports of entry without PPR and any other garbage or better avoid it altogether if you are not coming from another EU country.
But the other half of the truth is: don‘t be clueless when flying across the world.
“Clueless” is putting it too strongly, IMHO.
I think one needs to put oneself in the shoes of the person doing it, who is going to be expecting certain aviation practices – which work in aviation generally – to work in Europe, but they don’t.
Even among European pilots, almost nobody reads the AIP. They get away with it because most fly only locally, where they feel totally comfortable, and can make a phone call (in the right language) to check things. And if there is some trouble they can talk to the police, again in their local language, with the right gestures etc, which always lubricates things. These patterns are obvious. Look at where pilots from particular countries typically fly. Only a few of us venture far out.
A foreigner is disadvantaged in many ways, in this region of many different languages and cultures, and rules which are detailed in AIP part this section that subsection whatever…
BTW, what happened with that crowdfunding project? Collected enough money for the pilot? Any next steps? I didn’t find any details on the aopa.ch website neither.
But the other half of the truth is: don‘t be clueless when flying across the world.
Well said, and part of not being clueless is to understand the history and mindset of other countries – not to assume that these are as uniform across western Europe as in north America.
On a few occasions flying into the UK I have landed somewhere other than my planned and notified destination. Never a problem. Sent an email or made a phone call and the response, if any, was “wha’ever”. 
That may be partly because aerodrome owners are “known” to the authorities (like registered firearms dealers we are part of the surveillance and control system), but I believe that our uniformed services do act with and on intelligence rather than just by the rule book. I wouldn’t expect that in Germany or Poland or Switzerland – to name but three at random. Those countries are lovely to visit, with super open-hearted people, but the mindset of their authorities is, as one should expect, “different”.
I find interesting that you can cross the whole Atlantic with no issues and still get stuck in a dump with tough customs
I recall two pilots did ferry a C182 from the US last year, their only drama in air/ground was no PPR when landing at Blackpool (email did not go through), the rest they believe it was business as usual and not worth a mention
Jacko wrote:
Well said, and part of not being clueless is to understand the history and mindset of other countries
The man got his money back, for crying out loud. This is no longer a “mindset” of following the book, the rules or whatever. This is about certain people deliberately abusing their power given to them by a - uniform. Illegally harming innocent people and getting away with it. He still lost over 1000k on that incident. Who knows, maybe that is the German mindset after all?
LeSving wrote:
The man got his money back, for crying out loud.
Except for, IIRC from the video, a loss of about €10k due to currency rate changes.
I wonder whether he would have got any money back without 1,100+ YouTube views…
Still, the damage is done and if 10% of those viewers would have spent 10k EUR in Germany as GA tourists and now decide to divert to a more welcoming European country, those Obergruppenzollbeamte have just blown a million Euros.
Are there so many Americans flying to Germany trans-atlantic? I would say, this is only a handful GA pilots. Most of them will be professional ferry pilots, which will fly to/from Germany anyway. On the other hand, the prejudices of many Americans on Germany will be confirmed by these accidents.
Jacko wrote:
Well said, and part of not being clueless is to understand the history and mindset of other countries – not to assume that these are as uniform across western Europe as in north America.Exactly, this is what I also experienced from these young people, flying around the world. The video series where great, I loved to watch them, but they where sometimes quite unprepared and clueless, including some risky situations. Don’t get me wrong, it is easy to criticise people from the desk and flying around the world is a hudge accomplishment, but some stuff could have been avoided by just some more preparation and common sense I guess.
