In general, I would always check if your country of departure and country of arrival are part of EU and/or Schengen. If they are member of both (EU & Schengen), you’re mostly free to depart and arrive at any airport of those countries. Some countries do however ask for PNR or even PPR customs (like France), even when coming from a full EU and Schengen-member country. This is quite an unfair process, but we need unfortunately to deal with it… (Tip: Use a small French aerodrome first, upon arrival from a full EU/Schengen country, as this is allowed per article 9. Then you can legaly countinue on a national flight to any airport without any hassle.)
If your departure and/or arrival country are not member of both EU and Schengen, than you need some “clearance”. And here rules and habits might differ from country to country. In general, you’re playing “safe” by using international airports upon departure and arrival with immigration and customs on-site. Be aware that some countries ask you for some kind of PNR or PPR for customs and/or immigration (e.g. Belgium), even when using full international airports with immigration and customs on-site. Other countries offer customs and/or immigration PNR or PPR on small local aerodromes, so you won’t need to land first on a big (and mostly expensive) international airport.
Most European countries are very easy to deal with. Just take a bit more caution when flying from/to following countries: Switzerland and Norway (not EU-member), France (special immigration requirements even within EU/Schengen), Croatia (not Schengen-member), UK (neither EU or Schengen member), Greece (immigration/customs airport needed, even when coming from EU/Schengen).
Croatia is actually completely straightforward in that it is EU, not Schengen, and the AIP is correct.
Greece is the complicated one in Europe, with the concept of “port of entry” being separate from Customs+Immigration – see e.g. LGKC whose AIP entry says it has both but it has neither, while being open to international traffic from/to Schengen+EU (so e.g. Italy but not Switzerland).
These days, the AIP is the primary document in general (projects like this have not gone anywhere) so long as you “somehow know” about the exceptions. These exceptions aren’t supposed to be there, and contacting every airport is not encouraged, but the way things are going, shooting off an email to check is a good idea.
Peter, a long time ago, wrote:
This is a unique system and is a superb concession which no other European country (no other country anywhere?) has
Seeeee, the UK offers some nice things after all 
Yep, learned about it a couple of years ago whist enroute to Glenforsa, Scotland. Departed Calais and landed at Prestwick (expensive for my sized wallet) thinking I had to “clear customs”. Talking to some officers there, I was told as in Peter’s previous post.
Well done UK, I’ll definitely be back 
1) ★ CUSTOMS AND POLICE :
TO MARCH 28 : 0700-1700
MARCH 29 TO 31 : 0600-1600
FROM APRIL 01 : 0500-2000
PN INCLUDING OF PASSENGERS AND CREW (24HR WEEK, 48HR WEEK-END AND
HOL) TO :
- BSE-TARBES(A)DOUANE.FINANCES.GOUV.FR
- DIV-TOULOUSE2(A)DOUANE.FINANCES.GOUV.FR
- CODT-BORDEAUX(A)DOUANE.FINANCES.GOUV.FR
OUTSIDE THESE HOURS : O/R PN AS DESCRIBED ABOVE
(EXCEPT RE-ROUTING).
PN FOR FLIGHTS OUTSIDE THE EUROPEAN UNION (ICELAND, LIECHTENSTEIN,
NORWAY, SWITZERLAND) AS DESCRIBED ABOVE.
Tried all 3 emails… (@) and got instant mailer demon.
What now?
Did you try these like this or as you wrote?
Print the emails you sent
It’s not unknown to have typos in these addresses, but I’ve checked a few airports at random and they look like the correct format. Poitiers also has a fax number for one of them:
“FAX : 05 56 79 28 37,E-mail : [email protected]”
I’ll investigate
Yes as Gallois said: try lower cases, French Govt Linux servers are case sensitive NOTAMS use upper cases for emails: it feels like yelling to pilots on some online chat !
French Govt Linux servers are case sensitive
Unix is case-sensitive but the above implementation would be absolutely horrible. Is it really true?
A lot of contact details in AIPs are duff but this would get the prize.
Just my guess: I use lower cases when sending things, 2nd part will get casted in lower cases, the first one bounces in upper cases on some servers (in theory it should not), I think @Snoopy was missing “-“ on return email, not sure if this one was sent inside upper cases originally but it will get badly casted
Peter wrote:
Unix is case-sensitive but the above implementation would be absolutely horrible. Is it really true?
Unix is case-sensitive for filenames, username, etc. Whether email addresses are case-sensitive is entirely up to the email server program. They seem to use Postfix, which apparently can be configured both ways.
According to RFCs (Internet “standards”), the domain must be case insensitive, but the local part (left of the @) is left to the site whether it is case-sensitive or insensitive.
