Differences in aviation culture around Europe

Frans wrote:

From my perspective, international flights should be part of every PPL training. In Germany, I never dealt with different regulations, charts and habits during my training. I only learned the “German” way of doing things and never saw something different and I never had to fill any flightplan.

I totally agree with it. When I started my training in Malaga we were filing FP for each flight, whereas none in Germany during the whole training. I just flew solo to France for the heck of filing FP and it was fun. Pilots at Haguenau helped me to close the FP by phone and got a call from DFS to close the FP sometime after landing. Lessons learned :)

Peter wrote:

I wonder if anyone has any numbers for ELP in Germany? I would bet it is fairly high.

I tried to find such statistics on the internet, but to no avail. The only, very limited, data point I have is that on the day I took the BZF exam, there were five other applicants. All except one took the BZF I (English + German) rather than the more limited BZF II (German).

For IFR you need the more advanced AZF, which is seldom taken by private pilots without an IR (no advantage but higher costs). AFAIK, about 13000 Germans have an AZF, 11000 of which are ATPLs and the remaining 2000 are PPL-IRs.

EDIT: Here are statistics for LBA issued pilot licenses up to 2018. Note that non-IR PPLs are not issued by the LBA but instead by the individual German states, thus they do not appear here

172driver wrote:

Well, it sounds like you’ve already done more in 150 hours than most GA pilots do in their entire life – good on ya, keep it up !

Thanks, but to be honest, visiting multiple countries is quite easy around Germany, so I wouldn’t say this is a big accomplishment. ;-) For me, the Netherlands and Belgium are only one hour of flight away. Luxembourg and France 1,5 hours, the rest (DK, PL, CZ, AT and CH) around 2 hours. I do understand that this is far more difficult for someone living in Scotland or USA, where you have to travel many miles before reaching the next country, but on European mainland, this is quite easy. Especially for those living in smaller countries like DK, NL, BE, LU, CH or even in Microstate SMR…

MedEwok wrote:

Luckily I did pass the BZF 1, so there’s no formal restriction for going abroad, just need time, money and most importantly a rental aircraft available for long enough. The latter seems to be the biggest limitation in experiencing foreign aviation cultures for German pilots, along with the mentioned BZF 2 issue.

Very good you did pass the BZF 1! Indeed, finding a rental aircraft available for long enough can be a challange sometimes. You need to be flexible and find a club or owner group, where this is possible. I’m very lucky with my local club, where I can rent a Super Dimona for a few days or week without any issues.

Peter wrote:

Would you be able to put a percentage on this, Frans?

Since official numbers aren’t available to the public, I’m quite careful to type in a hard percentage, but someone from our Bezirksregierung (they issue LAPL and PPL licenses) told me that this would be roughly around 25%. ELP would be even less, since quite a few pilots I know do hold an English RT (my FI for example), but don’t have any ELP entry in their license. Just land at a random German airfield and ask how many pilots hold an valid ELP…

I remember my BZF exams at the Bundesnetzagentur in Cologne back in 2016, where I was part of ca 20 examinees in total. Only 3 (including myself and a ATPL trainee) went for the BZF 1 (English+German), the rest only for BZF 2 (German only). To be honest, some of them do get the English RT a few years afterwards, but why don’t get it directly?!

MedEwok wrote:

Here are statistics for LBA issued pilot licenses up to 2018. Note that non-IR PPLs are not issued by the LBA but instead by the individual German states, thus they do not appear here

I honestly don’t think that LBA statistics match with the avarage of German private pilots. As you already mentioned, LBA is not responsible for LAPL and PPL licenses without IR. This does the local Bezirksregierung.

Steve6443 wrote:

More interesting for me would be to determine the number of non-Germans to have a German Language Proficiency entry in their licence.

Well I’m a non-German with a German LP in my license :-), since you get level 4 automatically if you do the complete PPL training in Germany. My ELP examiner told me that I actually don’t need a German one, since ELP overrules the German LP as you already described. I only use German on DE/GE-only airfields, so I don’t see any need to renew my German LP in the future. However, I do know some horror stories from Switzerland, where someone heard from someone, that some Swiss pilot was prosecuted for transmitting German radiocalls on some uncontrolled German airfield without an German LP. Similar stories also exist of Swiss pilots in France, but I never heard about same issues elsewhere.

Steve6443 wrote:

I’ve never considered Dutch Mil to give poor service… That award has to go to the lack of joined up, radar supported FIS in UK.

I don’t have experiences of flying in the UK yet, so I might chance my opinion after that, but regarding Dutch Mil: If you can reach them (very often nobody is answering, due to lack of personell), they give only an actual QNH and thats it. No traffic advisories, no coordinations, no airspace warnings, no weather warnings, no joined up services with Amsterdam FIS etc. Quite useless if you ask me, except for asking if some restricted area is active or not.

Amsterdam Information is a total different story, they are operated by civil ATC instead of the Military and offer quite good services.

Frans wrote:

regarding Dutch Mil: If you can reach them (very often nobody is answering, due to lack of personell), they give only an actual QNH and thats it

Try 7600, they called us back activate FPL and went silence again

I realize I forgot to add the link re the license statistics above. Here it is:

https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/183097/umfrage/anzahl-der-piloten-in-deutschland/

As Frans points out, this is not representative of the German pilot population as a whole, due to missing LAPL and PPL pilots.

Frans wrote:

I don’t have experiences of flying in the UK yet, so I might chance my opinion after that, but regarding Dutch Mil: If you can reach them (very often nobody is answering, due to lack of personell), they give only an actual QNH and thats it. No traffic advisories, no coordinations, no airspace warnings, no weather warnings, no joined up services with Amsterdam FIS etc. Quite useless if you ask me, except for asking if some restricted area is active or not.

I’ve flown frequently in Holland, trips to Texel or through Holland to UK being more frequent than elsewhere and have never had an issue reaching them, always given me traffic information so I’m afraid this is where our experiences vary. I feel comfortable flying through / around Holland but in the UK, with ATSOCAS, it is a different ball game – you’re pretty much on your own…..

Frans wrote:

but regarding Dutch Mil: If you can reach them (very often nobody is answering, due to lack of personell), they give only an actual QNH and thats it. No traffic advisories, no coordinations, no airspace warnings, no weather warnings, no joined up services with Amsterdam FIS etc. Quite useless if you ask me, except for asking if some restricted area is active or not.

Again, my experiences are different. They have in the past been limited by capacity and there are recruitment problems for the armed forces in general. Just last Sunday on a 30 minute flight I received 3 traffic warnings and DA status on a day with plenty of VFR activity. Dutch Mil do their best with limited resources.

Frans wrote:

Well I’m a non-German with a German LP in my license :-), since you get level 4 automatically if you do the complete PPL training in Germany.

I didn’t get one. Where can I complain

Jujupilote wrote:

If UL pilots were all free to travel across Europe, it could create a HUGE community which would be very powerful.

Let’s start with the french UL community actually trying to align with the rest of EU, instead of actively cultivating a culture of difference. Lack of unity is holding back that potential power. Same with light GA vs heavy GA, AOPA/federations vs NBAA/IBAC, have different objectives and drive different agendas (with different amount of money/firepower).

Peter wrote:

The UK gets picked on on EuroGA regularly for various reasons

To be fair Peter, you personally stand for a good third of all the picking ;-).

Steve6443 wrote:

‘pass your message’

The literal translation to french kind of makes sense, so even though I was expecting a ‘go ahead’ I was not startled by that phraseology. Heard it in France too (Lyon approach). The poor trainee was not quite prepared for all I had to say though (her ELP was maybe 3-4), I had to pass parts of my message several times, before a more senior and english proficient controller obviously took over.

Frans wrote:

international flights should be part of every PPL training

Totally agree. I am lucky enough to be based at the very southern tip of Sweden, where Berlin is closer (and more accessible)(and has better beer) than Stockholm and the rest of the country. ELP test is not optional in my club. During the PPL training, our FIs try to fit a flight to Rügen, Roskilde or Bornholm, as an instrument flight or medium nav. Just to show that the air there carries you as well as back home, procedures can be a little different but different is not necessarily more complicated. But I know some people further north who have never left Sweden, because organizing a first leg to refuel somewhere before crossing the Baltic Sea is already a hassle.