Birrfeld has customs PPR during their opening hours, so it should be ok. Check the web site birrfeld.ch, call them (it says so on the charts http://www.birrfeld.ch/piloten-info/vac-ad-info/) and see if they have any issues with you flying directly there.
I never pay the full taxes for handling and parking in Zurich (self handling and club fleet) but I remember somebody telling me it was 15 CHF per night and about 27 CHF for the handling with MFGZ (mfgz.ch). Maybe you can also give them a call and ask them how much it would cost.
My brother-in-law flies from UK to Zurich from time to time and tells me the fees are reasonable. But he is a Cirrus owner…
pg wrote:
I would have to enter Schengen before flying into Birrfeld.
And customs into Switzerland. Switzerland is Schengen, but is not customs union with EU. So you can’t escape customs.
Just to make sure I have this right….?
Schengen is free passage of people. ie Immigration
Customs is about passage of goods.
So looking at Birrfeld, the airfield can do Customs clearance, but cannot do Immigration clearance. Thus if flying into Birrfeld from outside Schengen (e.g. Channel Islands), the Customs requirement is satisfied, but not the Immigration requirement.
If flying into Birrfeld from within the EU (e.g. France), then the Immigration aspect is satisfied by the flight being intra-Schengen, and the Customs by giving appropriate Prior Notice and submitting the paperwork.
So in effect, France to Birrfeld is OK. Channel Islands to Birrfeld is NOT OK (due to a lack of Immigration clearance).
Channel Islands to Zurich International is OK because it has both Customs and Immigration facilities.
And I thought gyroscopic precession was hard to understand…
pg wrote:
My understanding is that I could fly to Zurich International in one hop and that customs / immigration would be sorted. However, the fees (for a 96 hour stop) may prove somewhat excessive. The flight home would require expensive fuel.
Correct on the terms of immigration and customs, all there at ZRH without PPR or any other complicated stuff.
What you need to fly to ZRH is a slot.
Fees: I’d need to know the aircraft type and how many pax you intend to take out of ZRH in order to tell you more. For my plane, 1168 kg MTOW, the fees for an international flight are roughly (all in CHF):
Landing and ATC: 91.- (all included)
Passenger fee on international flights are 31.- per pax (outbound).
Handling is around 27.- per rotation (in and out) for that type. You’d have to ask directly at MFGZ.
Parking is negligable in comparison, around 10.- per night or so, again weight dependent.
Avgas price is pretty much the same in ZRH as in other places, so that is not a problem at all.
At ZRH, you get the tramway right outside the GAC, so public transport to the city is very easy and relatively cheap.
So it is not THAT bad, considering what a intermediate stop will cost you on top of what you have to pay anyway even if you go to LSZF. Plus that from Birrfeld you need to go to the city, which involves at least a taxi ride and a train ticket. You may well find that all in all, you won’t save much.
The primary problem is to get the slot. You can apply for it the day before though and are then pretty likely to get what you need.
Another alternative would be Grenchen LSZG, and then take the train. The railway station is about 15min by foot (and 5 min by taxi), the train runs hourly (x:25), and takes about one hour to Zürich.
Thanks for the suggestions…
Looks like Zurich is approx CHF204 for a 72 hour trip, with Grenchen CHF143. As Mooney_Driver points out, there really isn’t much in it when you factor in the extra time and cost to get into the city centre.
Has anyone recent experience of Colmar? The other option might be to fly into Colmar (though I am getting mixed messages about whether customs / immigration is available there), then rent a car and enjoy the drive. Also means I have a car available for my time in Zurich, and cheaper fuel for the return to the Channel Islands….
LFGA so have customers and Immigration. 1 hr prior request is required during ATS hours and 6 hrs outside offATS hours. I once spoke to someone at the customs office responsible for LFGA who told me they would prefer more advanced notice than 1 hr. There should be a form to request customs on the Colmar airport web site.
ATS operate only Mon through Fri according to NOTAM.
Colmar should work, so should Grenchen and Altenrhein. There are other places too, but well, I wonder how far you want to go to save on landing fees just to pay through the nose to actually reach your destination. I can’t say that makes much sense to me.
If I want to go someplace I will try to get as close as possible. In Zurich, if you want to be in the city, a car is next to useless and viciously expensive if you want to park in the center. So if you land at LSZH, you get out of the GAC and have the tramway in front of your nose. With it, the whole of Zürich and surrounding area are in reach. IMHO this will be worth quite a lot of money if you calculate the cost of moving from Grenchen, Altenrhein, Birrfeld e.t.c. into the city, particularly if you have to do the Shengen immigration elsewhere.
I frankly have problems with cities where I have to actually land in another city in order to get to my original target. Munich is one example, where the closest airport with immigation and possibly IFR if needed is Augsburg, which is a nice city but from where it takes an expensive taxi ride as well as a train to get to the center. Particularly as they have a lovely airport right at the city boundary which however is useless due to only 250 slots per year for visitors (500 movements). So if the city actually has an airport which is accessible then i don’t see why not to use it unless there are good reasons.
If you do come to Zürich, pg, let me know in advance. I work at LSZH and we can meet if you want.
