I get confused by that A/A French only requirement and I am not convinced it is always so clear cut.
If you look at the AIP plate for Mulhouse, which is untowered, there is a published A/A freq. with a procedure to talk to Bale Info until 1 minute before the overhead. The A/A is stated in the plate as French Only.
I understand it like this; you can chat away in English with FIS, like any other flight but are prohibited from speaking English for the final 90 seconds of the flight.
Funny how people see this as a prohibition when it is common sense enabling separation with the other users of the airport who very frequently only speak the local language. It enables those who can self announce to use the airport when unmanned: the idea is that in the last 90 seconds you describe above, you have entered the circuit of an uncontrolled field with local VFR traffic self announcing. Imagine Jean Claude who has been flying his Jodel for the last 50 years there, doing a few bad weather circuits for practice. He doesn’t speak a word of English. Suddenly someone is released by Mulhouse and announces he on final in English on the air air frequency. He would really be quite confused…
France is one of the rare countries authorising approaches without ATC and this enables a lot of airfields to be used IFR or out of hours, as opposed to the situation in Italy or Germany.
I understand your point, but explain Abbeville… There is no French Only requirement, so Jean Claude would be very confused. My point is I am not sure it is as clear cut as suggested that airfields with ATC or AFIS are French Only when the service is closed; and the uncontrolled airfields do not have a French Only requirement.
Podair – I agree with you completely, but the bottom line is that pilots (well, most of them 
) are relatively safety-conscious and will prefer to avoid a situation where separation could be compromised.
So if an airport is going to have traffic which understands only French (we all know even the biggest French airports have loads of activity spoken in French but that’s another debate and there have been plenty of incidents as a result of that) the pilots who cannot speak French will prefer to avoid it.
For the same reason, if I am going to a big busy event which is essentially uncontrolled and is known to have loads of dodgy stuff going in (Sywell in the UK comes to mind) I am not going to fly at the weekend. I will go on a weekday and try to arrive as early as possible. Or I will drive…
