Silvaire wrote:
Filing a plan of my route in advance with government
We’re not filing with the government, we’re filing with ATC.
Having thought about this a bit more, it seems to me it would eliminate a lot of hassle for everybody concerned if both flight plans and customs requirements were eliminated for international flight of light aircraft of under a certain weight within the Schengen zone. This wouldn’t go as far as has been gone on the roads, where a driver and truck loaded with explosives could drive the length of Europe without anybody even knowing. However by limiting the weight of the aircraft it would provide a response to criticism that unlike the roads, you cannot set up a road block in the air.
Silvaire wrote:
and customs requirements were eliminated for international flight of light aircraft of under a certain weight within the Schengen zoneWell that is more or less the case in the EU, thanks to EU Regulation 2020/877, at least for private flights, as long as no goods relevant to customs are on board. Only Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland are non-EU countries within Schengen. You can’t force them to implement similar laws, since they’re all sovereign countries, just as Canada, Mexico, and the USA. Remember: Schengen is only an immigration treaty and has nothing to do with EU membership (freedom of goods).
where a driver and truck loaded with explosives could drive the length of Europe without anybody even knowingYou’re right, as long as the truck remains inside the EU. But as soon as a truck enters or leaves Switzerland for example, all trucks are obliged to go through customs. And they have X-ray scans at main border crossing points. At smaller border crossing points, trucks are not allowed to pass and is enforced by video surveillance and mobile customs patrols.
Well that is more or less the case in the EU, thanks to EU Regulation 2020/877, at least for private flights, as long as no goods relevant to customs are on board
That is the regulation which almost nobody believes could possibly be true and 97.3% of GA pilots are waiting for somebody else to test it, no? 
The funny thing is that, in GA, the plane is almost never searched 
So we all go through this charade, when [ and I am not to write the blindindly obvious ].
@172driver, politicians aren’t motivated by making sense in general as much as scoring points on narrow ‘hot button’ issues but they and their regulators are motivated by their own interests, which might include not looking stupid. The current airspace structure and cross border protocols for VFR light aircraft are absurd in Europe in comparison with those for people in cars and that provides plenty of scope for calling their competence into question. The problem counter to that and more specific to Europe is that there are so many redundant government organizations, with little legal definition of their roles and limitations on power that irrational aviation regulation is more the rule than the exception.
@Frans, I’ve made something like 50 or 60 visits and multi-week road trips around all parts of Europe, often being in about three countries daily, so am quite familiar with border protocols in place on the ground, as well as their evolution over the last 35 years. On my next trip I’ll be in Germany, Austria, Lichtenstein (to avoid paying for the Swiss motorway sticker, I’m sure you know the drill), then Switzerland and Italy…. on the first day. The second day will be just Italy and Switzerland, but the third day will take me to France in which after a couple more days I’ll make my fourth visit to Corsica. From there I’ll head to Tuscany and northward again. It would be great to do similar trips by plane, and in fact I looked into shipping my Luscombe to Italy for that purpose while I still had two planes, with the idea of basing it at an aviosuperficie and making a couple of trips a year to fly it around the southern European and Alpine countries as one might a motorcycle. Eventually after probably three years I would have shipped it home, it was a very simple plane with minimal equipment and the wings come off easily for shipment. The problems with that plan were all to do with regulation and taxes. On a practical level the distances are short, 85 kts would be fine given that I’d not be in a hurry, and that plane was designed for use from any kind of field. However, the bureaucracy and associated limitations for my kind of flying would be so much compared with doing it on the roads and passes that I judged it not worth the trouble. I do occasionally fly with an Austrian based friend who has one plane there on N-register, and another in Germany.
Of all the things in ga that are worth fighting to get changed, vfr flights plans must be very near the bottom of the list.
If you plan your flight with any modern vfr flight planning system, then submitting a flight plan is trivial.
I submit mine with easyvfr and given that it already knows my route and aircraft, submitting the flight plan is less than 30 seconds work and is free. I even sometimes submit one when it isn’t required if I want someone to be ready to carry out overdue action.
Submitting vfr flight plans in this day and age is really trivial and does come with some benefits (over due action and fewer details to pass to at if you choose to contact them.)
Whatever about making then non compulsory, is certainly not like to set the facility to file them being withdrawn.
Of all the things in ga that are worth fighting to get changed, vfr flights plans must be very near the bottom of the list. If you plan your flight with any modern vfr flight planning system, then submitting a flight plan is trivial.
Thanks for supporting what I wrote a few pages ago. Some things like this one are not much beneficial (at least we don’t see the benefits) but they are not worth of fighting against because we have more important things to fight against.
Emir wrote:
Some things like this one are not much beneficial (at least we don’t see the benefits) but they are not worth of fighting against because we have more important things to fight against.
That depends on your priorities. Having read Silvaire’s posts over the years I strongly suspect the reasons he is opposed to VFR flight plans is not the (minimal) hassle in filing, opening and closing them but a matter of principle – that filing a flight plan implies that you tell some “authority” how you’re going to fly. I do have some sympathy with that view. I also agree that it doesn’t make sense from a national security perspective to require flight plans for cross-border flights between allied countries.
It is quite a different matter if part of the flight is over international waters. Some Swedish pilots have been surprised after having been intercepted by Swedish fighters on a flight between Gotland and the mainland without a flight plan. It may feel like a domestic flight, but as a substantial part of that flight is over international waters you actually pass the Swedish border twice, so a flight plan in necessary. Given that there is a lot of military activity over international waters in the Baltic, both by (now) allied countries and a country of dubious friendliness that does make sense.
Going back to the original question and probably being the one referred to in Peter’s post about someone on here talking about the culture’s of different countries.
If you are flying from Sweden (a Schengen and EU country) to any airport in France (a Schengen and EU country) you should not need to PPR or PN for C+I ,as you do not need those services.
There are ,however, probably some airfields that demand PN for intra Schengen flights.
One can only assume that the airfield/ douanier/prefecture have not received the note. Distinctly possible, as much regulation in France is governed locally. Some towns will still have their Christmas decorations up in August, some take them down on twelfth night. French culture, no one cares, the Gallic shrug🙂
Now if you are going to fly to one of the airfields which are still insisting on intra Schengen PPR/PN, you can either just go with it and email a PN/PPR or you can query it as Lionel did in the case of La Rochelle LFBH. I believe the AIP has now been amended deleting the words “intra Schengen” .
This of course assumes there is no Schengen suspension in certain areas.
Outside of a terrorist incident these are normally lodged 1 year in advance and the full list for the year plus the areas affected are there. You can usually figure out the reason for the suspension from that.
Eg. There might well (and I don’t know) be a suspension in areas hosting the Olympic Games this year.
As for FPLs you don’t have to file a flight plan for VFR flight within France. Entering CAS can be done on the radio. Class E doesn’t need a clearance but it is still CAS and there are restrictions on cloud distances. (This is the same as ICAO but I don’t know if it applies in USA)
A FPL is required for a flight between the mainland and Corsica. It is better to file this before your flight.
Also a FPL is required for crossing frontiers. This can be filed in the air on radio but you need to allow enough time for the plan to be circulated to all necessary stations. You also need to report when crossing the frontier.
IIUC there are currently (according to SIA website) discussions between France and Germany to eliminate the need for a FPL or at least a filed FPL.
The thing is while many across the pond think of Europe as a United States of Europe. We are not. We are 27 independent sovereign countries which come together and give up part of that sovereignty in a common cause. Maybe one day we will become more like a United States of Europe and maybe we never will.
So as Emir rightly says filing a flight plan is not top of the list of worries when flying around Europe. IMO it’s also nice to know that someone will be looking out for you and triggering a search if you don’t turn up when expected.
A few years back there was a story run in many of the newspapers here of a G reg light aircraft and dead pilot being found by chance in a wooded area north of Cannes/Nice. No one knew how long he had been there but early reports showed that if there had been a SAR trigger, he would very possibly have been injured but alive. There was no FPL and no radio communication with an ATS.
A horrible way to go but hopefully the carriage of PLBs and ELTs will avoid this sort of tragedy in the future. It might also avoid the need for FPLs over hostile environments. We will see. Sometimes things take time to change.
