Buckerfan wrote:
There must be somewhere down the western half of France where I could do customs and immigration on short notice??
Not much really, Calais & LeTouquet are 2h PN, the kingdom of Caen has gone 72h PN
We had Lille: 24h PPR for handling but turning up last minute was fine but now it’s dead pricing-wise
Nantes: works with zero PN (2h in AIP if late in the day) but you need ACB/Handling…
On the east, we had Lyon Bron that was zero PN from UK for both C+I, it has gone to the rats now:
AIP AD2 is still on another planet but the website is pretty accurate,
https://businessaviation.lyonaeroports.com/fr/preparation-du-vol-0#douane
If you have range & speed, I suggest skipping whole France from UK 
boscomantico wrote:
In the east, there is always Chalons Vatry with no PN
Thanks, I missed that one (I think it has permanent presence like Nantes/Lille during operation hours)
Thank you Bosco and Ibra. Very helpful
Posts moved to a new thread and threads merged. Some off topic posts are valuable as standalone, in which case I start a new thread with them.
This particular issue has demolished UK GA travel to France. That’s pretty big. It’s also a significant economic loss to many French airports, although I very much doubt anybody there is concerned about that This is also why I moved this lot into its own thread, in the hope that it would be valuable but it turned into mostly back-pedalling 
https://businessaviation.lyonaeroports.com/fr/preparation-du-vol-0#douane
These rules drawn up for international flights at Bron are so confused… it‘s a shame.
And again, they seem to want to say that ANY internnational flight requires 24hPN.
Thing is: I an sure this is overlooked by hundreds of crews every year. So what do they do with them when they arrive? Likely nothing. Crazy. Anyone have any experience with that and be willing to talk about it? (i.e. arrived there from say Germany without PN)
Unless I misread the page, 24h PN to immigration is required only for international arrivals between 10.30 pm and 6.30 am although it is still shocking that France often applies the PN requirement to intra-Schengen flights.
Right. So easy to misread this stuff. Also because this website stuff is often written slightly differently than in the AIP. And sometimes, when you enquire with OPS, it is even slightly different.
So during daylight, no PN needed it seems.
Interesting also that flights from/to Ireland (non-Schengen!) do not require any PN (except, again, during night hours it seems…)
Interesting also that flights from/to Ireland (non-Schengen!) do not require any PN
That is surely a cock-up – like when I landed at Calabria the police thought Croatia-Italy didn’t need Immigration. I know for a fact that only one out of a group of policemen at Montpellier knew that bit.
The problem is that the people who draw up this info – websites and AIP and Notams – are not accountable to anybody, and if say 30% of inbounds go elsewhere as a result they don’t get to find out (same as you don’t easily find out that 30% of your outbound emails are binned into spam) and even if they did they would not care because they are paid the same, until the airport actually closes completely.
These rules drawn up for international flights at Bron are so confused… it‘s a shame
Interesting also that flights from/to Ireland (non-Schengen!) do not require any PN (except, again, during night hours it seems…)
Actually, Bron AIP AD tried to reflect Arrêté 2017 “as it is” with separated contact for douanes & police services and detailled entries on rules for schengen, customs union and outside EU…so here you go one full page…if you ignore “UK still listed in EU”
If you look at AIP they have police (PAF) & douanes (DGI) separated as two services, this is rare as elsewhere in France immigration is done by customs on behalf of police (e.g. Calais, Havre…) while places like Bordeaux, Nantes, Lille where police-aux-frontiere…if you look at Website, it seems PAF does not care about intra-Schengen (worth calling their number with Schengen suspension but they don’t care)
Police have permanent presence during opening hours, so no police PN from Croatia & Ireland (no customs PN as they are in customs union), I have flown from UK to Bron with no PN in 2019, I doubt one need to send 24h PN inta-Schengen with the suspension but there is PAF phone un AIP AD
