FAA records appear to indicate the plane has been sold. If I was living in Germany and had a house at Spruce Creek, I know where I’d do my flying. Motorcycles are great to ride across the alps.
One of the fundamental misunderstandings of US folks in Europe is the existence of countries with independent legal/regulatory structures.
It is not like flying across states within one country (size aside, like flying from Bavaria to Berlin, or Barcelona to Madrid).
Rhe proper idea (again, size aside) is more like flying from US across Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala into Belize ;-)
Try that with an ipad but without cash ;-)
The problem is thus not the plane, the cash or the fuel planning – all symptoms, only; it is the total disregatd for the actual political situation where he is/was based.
Sad, but not rare.
I don’t want to judge the competency of this pilot by his article. What it shows is that we have become used to alot of hassle flying around europe and consider it normal to jump through hoops and over so many obstacles to do our flights.
Even preparing thoroughly using official sources is no guarantee for avoiding surprises.
Why was his fuel planning inadequate?
If he is a US citizen who is temporarily in Europe, then he has/had no need for European papers, so his opening phrase doesn’t apply, too
If this was done to show how hard it is for a US pilot to fly in Europe (specifically without doing any due diligence about being outside the US) then the above would not apply either.
Sure US AOPA has a political agenda. Their magazine, and especially their regular email mailshots, are full of their work in the US Govt machinery, and some of the claims have to be taken with a pinch of salt. We get the same here, where whenever anything good happens and EASA makes some concession, several AOPAs together with PPL/IR each claim sole credit for it 
That’s a good thing, of course, because via IAOPA this filters down to something over here too, occassionally, as well as providing entertainment whenever some US AOPA official speaks at a European presentation and mentions instrument approaches to unmanned towers
I didn’t realise the author is a US citizen, and thought the “CFI” was just a way of presenting an “FI” for US readers. The article just says he lives in Germany. Some good detective work by Silvaire I’ve edited the title to make it just “instructor”.
Re what mistakes he made, one would have to go through the article line by line and make comments. It would be a very long list. Just this bit seems total nonsense
since IFPS won’t change the EOBT for you.
More here
Who was doing the route planning for him? Was he using some app (perhaps the US edition of Foreflight) on which he just used the presented EOBT, without realising it could be edited? This is just incredible!
It sounds like he was filing IFR but not using the Eurocontrol system, and was getting MAN (manually fixed) returns. It is possible that if you filed say 1hr away then the MAN message might take 30 mins and then your EOBT is just 30 mins away.
Re fuel planning, “1hr reserve” is not enough. Firstly any due diligence will show there isn’t a whole lot of avgas around (but we now know he was using some dodgy app for that too) and secondly for FAA IFR rules you need your destination, then alternate, then 45 minutes, which is (a) usually impossible to meet with 1hr of fuel in the tanks at the destination and (b) is too tight anyway for practical situations.
Can anyone guess what app he was using?
It is possible the pilot did a great job in reality but one has to judge stuff on the basis of what has been written. It’s the same with flying movies… if you make one where you work hard to make a complete dick of yourself (as many have with their go-pros) you can expect people to comment accordingly
“There is no substitute for doing one’s homework prior to departure”. Yeah, right.
Frankly, if this guy owns an aircraft, has an ATPL, and is based in Germany, how can he not know about Eurocontrol flight planning requirements and the practical necessity of using an autorouting system?
I’d feel different if he was a visitor to Europe.
Airborne_Again wrote:
how can he not know about Eurocontrol flight planning requirements and the practical necessity of using an autorouting system?
I did my IR in Sweden and many instructors I met have no idea what Autorouter or RocketRoute is. They are simply used to the wonderful service given by the Swedish ARO services and they always call in their flightplans by phone. Also, for local IFR flights within the DK-SE FAB (AIP ENR 2.2-4 4) almost anything will validate. My point is autorouting services are not always known because they are not always required. Unless you are a member of this forum and fly all over Europe to our meet-ups =)
Unless you are a member of this forum and fly all over Europe to our meet-ups =)
Or fly within Europe from/to countries where these heavily taxpayer funded (and very expensive – of the order of millions per year just for the one briefing office) still exist
However I think something else very strange was going on, on this trip.
Peter wrote:
since IFPS won’t change the EOBT for you.
I reckon he might have gotten a slot. Means he had an earlier EOBT and then got under time pressure due to the fact that he did not know what he was doing.
Peter wrote:
Re fuel planning, “1hr reserve” is not enough.
More than correct yes, especcially in places like the Balkans. I usually plan 45 minutes of final reserve (never to be touched) plus Alternate plus Contingency. Alternates which won’t give trouble are quite rare in those areas, as they have to have avgas, POE and be suitable for GA money wise. Belgrade for instance is pretty isolated in that regard as Osijek and Nis have funny opening times, so in practice, you need to be able to cover Zagreb, Sofia or Skopje, all of which are also not too GA friendly but better than some others nearby. In a 120 kt plane all of these are more than one hour away.
It’s totally different when the destination is in a place which has airports all over. Flying into ZRH, I can do easily with one hour of reserve (plus final reserve) as I have at least 3 airports around that area which can accomodate a diversion from a Non-Schengen airport without pre-notice and which are suitable for GA, add to that many on the way there where you can simply land and get fuel.
In practice, if an airplane has a 5 hour endurance, trip time should not exceed 3 hours, the rest is reserve in most cases unless you got a bullet proof plan with plenty of airports. So far only once I landed with about 1 hour total on board at ZRH on a flight from Belgrade which still would have left me with Altenrhein and Friedrichshafen as alternates had they refused me for whatever reason.
Means he had an earlier EOBT and then got under time pressure due to the fact that he did not know what he was doing.
Can you get an earlier EOBT via a CTOT? I’ve never heard of that?
if an airplane has a 5 hour endurance, trip time should not exceed 3 hours, the rest is reserve in most cases unless you got a bullet proof plan with plenty of airports.
Exactly…
How can a public airport refuse you when you filed a flightplan? Does that happen?
