@Skydriller its unfortunate that you have been stopped so much, so I quite understand your chagrin. I have only been stopped once, by a beautiful young blond Gendarme, who was incredibly polite.Sadly she was also young enough to be my grandaughter or I should say great granddaughter. My wife has still not been stopped despite passing several gendarmes and going out much more often. Interesting story on French television today is that they are trialling the use of sniffer dogs to sniff out the virus. Apparently its got something to do with the odour of the sweat people with the virus give off. So far the trials are quite promising and they are looking to training up some 100 dogs, so at airports they will be able to check for the virus alongside checking for drugs and explosives.
The police are not allowed to do random stop-and-searches in the UK either, but it is trivial to get around it: “Sir, you were driving unevenly” 
In practice they could stop you on your drive to the airport, but I have not heard of that happening. What I strongly suspect does happen – because it is such an obvious low hanging fruit – is that they look for cars containing what looks like a family, which suggests they are going for a trip, which is incompatible with the guidelines.
Gallois’s story about the dogs doesn’t surprise me at all. There was some evidence they can detect prostate cancer. The “beautiful young blond Gendarme” is sooo French… it is quite impossible to happen in the UK, even with an appropriate substitution of the word “Gendarme” 
For the record, in the course of more than 1,000 miles by GA and about 500 by car in the past 2-3 weeks, I have seen no “enforcement” of British travel restrictions/guidance. We are all just going about our business in a careful and reasonable manner – squawking frequency monitoring codes with ADS-B OUT in the air, and observing reasonable and prudent speeds on the roads. Private GA is a perfect tool for social distancing.
Obviously one gives Lancashire a wide berth, but elsewhere in Great Britain there seems to be no general imposition of a police state – yet.
Perhaps more importantly, in this part of Britain, there is none of the “resentment” of GA imagined and provoked by the UK CAA mutaween. Our neighbours, who are busy taking care of their own lives and livelihoods, enjoy seeing aeroplanes and have even been known to complain mildly when they don’t.
wbardorf wrote:
Changing the topic slightly, I wonder how many more GA-friendly airfields we will have in the future and how many would be threatened by closure.Gatwick seems to be feeling the brunt of complete airline operations shutdown such as BA and Virgin – based on the way the press announcements are worded it doesn’t like they are planning on coming back that soon.
Then add no Flybe which affects a lot of mid-sized UK airports…
An interesting question indeed. So far it doesn’t look like lots of airports that used to try to squeeze out GA are even considering that GA could be an alternate stream of revenue, albeit obviously much lower revenue. But less is better than none, isn’t it?
I for one cannot (yet) imagine the likes of Gatwick becoming friendly towards GA again…
MedEwok wrote:
I for one cannot (yet) imagine the likes of Gatwick becoming friendly towards GA again…
FWIW, there’s now a constant flow of Cessnas and similar little ones going into KLAX. No problem at all, even VFR (!!). I did it IFR a couple of weeks ago. won’t last, of course….
Schiphol is seeing as much GA traffic as heavy metal. A crossing of the CTR through the overhead including a 360 around the tower is getting to be the routine – can’t last though.
172driver wrote:
FWIW, there’s now a constant flow of Cessnas and similar little ones going into KLAX. No problem at all, even VFR (!!). I did it IFR a couple of weeks ago. won’t last, of course….
Yes and that is wonderful. There is no real reason, apart from organisational inertia and sheer malice towards GA, why the same couldn’t happen in Europe in FRA, LHR etc., but alas those reasons will suffice to keep GA out of otherwise deserted airports. When e.g. @highflyer posted that he still needed a slot to do a low pass over Berlin-Tegel, I was really scratching my head
..
My guess is that there will be lots of demand for bizjets when travel becomes possible again. Many routes will have been cut and people will be unwilling to risk public transport if they can afford to hire their own aircraft.
Whether regional airports will become more welcoming of SEPs again, is another matter.
Especially for several people travelling together 1st class. A bizjet starts to look quite attractive, based on some numbers I have seen.
Not so much for transatlantic journeys though.
Peter wrote:
Especially for several people travelling together 1st class. A bizjet starts to look quite attractive, based on some numbers I have seen.
Not so much for transatlantic journeys though.
Spotted lot of that, seemed a large fraction of it was UK, France, Switzerland
For the Atlantic, maybe it is time for JasonC to open a ticket box
