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ALL Italian airports: non Schengen flights are possible / immigration available

According to this post:

Italy allows arrivals from non-Schengen (and departures to Non-Schengen) at any italian airfield (including unlicensed ones) on condition that this is announced to the italian authorities three hours in advance. It’s basically the same as the GAR mechanism for flights from the EU.

I have never come across this before. Normally, in Europe, flying to/from the UK, one needs an airport with Immigration, but Customs is (in theory) not required. In traditional aviation language, such airports are called “Customs” airports. As far as I can tell, in Europe, only Germany is capable of arranging Immigration without also arranging Customs.

Does anyone know what level of notification is required for this Italian concession, and where (exactly) it should be addressed to? Also what proof of sending is required?

I know from my own experience that an Italian airport is quite capable of refusing a landing clearance when you are on the final approach, due to this, though that was in a non-EU departure situation.

Another thread like this but about Germany is here. It would appear that Italy and Germany are both capable of flights to all of their airports – if you can send the notice to the right place.

Last Edited by Peter at 28 Jul 21:08
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter,

you’ll find all the relevant information in AIP Italy, GEN 1.2.

here

[ edited to shorten the crazy URL using tinyurl.com :) ]

Last Edited by Peter at 29 Jul 07:25

Apparently cut and paste won’t do. Anyway you could go to www.enav.it,, set up a free account and get access to the aip.
Or simply google (it) aip gen1.2.

Many thanks mmignini

I fixed up the link using tinyurl.com.

You are right – they disabled Copy on the PDF. However one can do a screenshot. I use Hyperdesktop which is brilliant for this kind of stuff – it auto uploads to imgur.com and leaves the URL to the image on the clipboard. The text in question appears to be on page 1

It doesn’t say who you are supposed to notify (i.e. exact contact details) and how.

Most interestingly, on page 22 is this piece

which is extremely unusual in using the flight plan as the notification, but I am not sure of the context especially as it refers to an “international” airport.

Does the paragraph suggest that a flight plan indeed serves as sufficient notice for a non EU arrival, if going to to an international airport? Specifically I have pre-EU Croatia and Padova in mind here…

Last Edited by Peter at 29 Jul 07:41
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The way I read it, this concession only applies to flights within the EU. The second paragraph reads:

Aircraft operating international flights (from/to extracommunity Countries) must make their first landing at or last departure from an international community airport.

Last Edited by tomjnx at 29 Jul 07:44
LSZK, Switzerland

Indeed. No mention of Schengen. It appears to say that if you are flying from inside the EU, you can go anywhere without prenotification. I suppose it does talk of customs rather than immigration.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

So it appears that

is the relevant bit for UK flights, but who do you notify and how?

The totally laughable thing is that I have been going around this issue for 12 years and so have countless other pilots, and nobody I know has discovered this. I have also mentioned the “Customs” issue in various trip writeups on my website (which attract some 25GB/month of downloads and have been commented on by email to me by some 3000 pilots since 2003) and nobody has picked up on it either.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The other question you have to ask, is can you trust it? The immigration stuff in the UK AIP has been wrong for years (by wrong I mean that it doesn’t agree with the laws, nor how it was operated in practice). Following it would have gotten you into trouble. I’m not sure if it’s been corrected since.

The Irish AIP is also wrong (more restrictive than reality).

I get the impression that the AIPs are written up and things like this are forgotten about and don’t necessarily keep up to date with the laws. Part GEN seems very open to this.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

Exactly. There is so much national legislation which is not necessarily in the AIP (even if it should be).

Who reads GEN 1.2 anyway to look for this kind of stuff, when “everybody” knows that in Europe, non Schengen, you have to use “Customs” (traditionally meaning customs and immigration) airports only.

Also, until I read it on EuroGA from I believe Achim, I had never heard that Immigration alone (which is all that’s needed for a UK flight) could be arranged at any German airport, by sending a notice to “somebody”.

I can make a mistake easily but I somehow don’t think that thousands of other pilots and all the airports one travels to, and contacts beforehand and they confirm the generally understood situation, are all stupid.

This illustrates the huge value of EuroGA as a really useful source of information.

I wish one could create a straight summary of the rules around Europe… a kind of “wiki”. It would be easier than creating a database of individual airports, which would always suffer from insufficient updates and general apathy. I think such a wiki would be only 1 page.

That said, I would not like to get arrested and thrown into a cell until somebody digs out somebody who can speak enough English to get me a lawyer.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I think such a wiki would be only 1 page.

Well, herein lies the problem – rules n’regs around Europe aren’t uniform. I think you’d have to write up a lot more than one page, just to cover the offical version. Than there are local variations which aren’t documented anywhere…..

BTW, I did write up the ‘immigration only’ thing in Germany over at PPrune long before the advent of Euroga. Have used it myself….

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