Locarno/LSZL is included in the list of airports allowed for entry from extra-Schengen countries (see airports category C). The link to the forms for cross-border flights to Locarno on the airport website is broken, so inquire directly.
You would need to ask Jepp.
Anyway, to close the topic. The OP (who is not moving to Switzerland anyway, it seems) was very superficially and wrongly informed by whoever he talked to. Getting in and out of the country is not that restricted at all.
You would need to ask Jepp.
I don’t understand. This kind of info should never be taken from anything from Jeppesen. For a start they tend to use “customs” as a generic term.
boscomantico wrote:
As far as I can tell, foreigners being treated as unwelcome is indeed a big problem in Switzerland
I moved my family to Switzerland in 2002 and we lived there for 10 years. It was the teenage years for our two sons and my wife and I were in our mid 40s.
As far as I am concerned it was an absolutely golden period in our lives. It is of course beautiful, but it is also wholesome, healthy, stimulating and fun. I got my PPL in Switzerland as part of a busy pilot club at Bex Aerodrome, and spent my formative hundreds of pilot hours flying between the peaks and along the valleys of this incredible place.
Can foreigners be treated as unwelcome. Sure. But no more than anywhere else in my experience (we have lived in 5 different countries so far). Firstly, you have to understand that the swiss treat each other as unwelcome from time to time – with deep cultural divides between the German, French, Italian and Romansch areas. Second, it is little known that Switzerland has among the highest levels of immigration in the world. Incredibly, 31% of the population over 15 are first generation immigrants according to Federal Govt statistics! 50 years ago it was Italians, Turks and Portugese, for the last 20 years it has been ex Yugoslavs, Albanians.
There is remarkably little tension considering this background. Why – because the immigrants are so damn grateful to be living in paradise, and secondly because the Swiss system demands integration in stark contrast to all other western democracies which tolerate immigrant ‘ghettos’. Want to naturalise? Fine, we encourage that BUT 1) you MUST learn the local language to a high degree and we will test you on that and 2) you must study really hard and learn everything about your new country from the your local village to the federation as a whole and we will test you on that too, rigorously. We had first had experience of this as both our sons earned Swiss citizenship.
So sure, if you think that you are going to arrive and be best friends with the grumpy Swiss nationalist farmer up the hill. Probably not going to happen, but he isn’t best friends with anyone anyway. But will you find lots of people to form friendships with – absolutely – pilot friends, neighbours, business friends, school, gate friends, other foreigners. If you love Switzerland, Switzerland will love you back. If you spend your time grumbling about the place, then forget about it.
Flying in and out of CH is more complex than it should be, certainly, but for actual travel, it’s a very small percentage of the time you spend planning the flight.
What’s a shame is that it does make it difficult to do a spontaneous flight to a neighboring country.
If you are based in CH, you keep your aircraft at an airport, and you figure out the customs process for that airport, and follow it. For my airport, LSGY, there is a web form to fill out, and then a phone call. They store your previous data, so it takes about 30 seconds to fill in. The part that I struggle with is the time slot – you have to tell them when you are leaving and when you will return. This is not always known, and changing it is a bit of a hassle. Not a huge deal, but what’s surprising is that it does not seem to be technically legally required, but we still do it to avoid confrontation.
The other “complication” is the flight plan. Skydemon makes this extremely easy, but having to file a flight plan xx minutes before takeoff also precludes a spontaneous flight across the border.
My hope is that “soon” this will be changed so that it’s like driving a car across the border, which is painless.
Buckerfan wrote:
As far as I am concerned it was an absolutely golden period in our lives. It is of course beautiful, but it is also wholesome, healthy, stimulating and fun.
All this is lies. It’s a horrible place. Stay away. /s
Buckerfan wrote:
We had first had experience of this as both our sons earned Swiss citizenship.
Congrats on that! They will thank you for making that happen.
Why don‘t you research the topic properly, if you are so interested? Spoiler alert: it is not so easy. The Swiss AIP only contains IFR airports. These all have Customs and Immigration. You can see for yourself.
VFR airport details are found only in the Swiss VFR Manual, which, generally speaking, is not free of charge. Have fun… Anyway, Locarno airport does put the their VFR Manual docs on its (well-hidden) website. And guess what, even that official information does not differentiate between Customs and Immigration!
So, how do YOU know Locarno can be used for non-Schengen flights?
Bottom line: short of calling the airports and enquiring very individually, one can only rely on the list above as safe non-Schengen airports of entry. So, formally speaking, Jeppesen may not be all that wrong to limit their list of airports of entry to those above, which was my short answer, Although I agree that Jepp often does a poor job with AD information details.
Why don‘t you research the topic properly, if you are so interested?
If you said that to anyone new here, we would never see them again.
short of calling the airports and enquiring very individually
Not a good idea, and you know why (I posted a link above). A reply from an airport is not sufficient due diligence in certain countries.
If you are based in CH, you keep your aircraft at an airport, and you figure out the customs process for that airport, and follow it.
Which Swiss airports still have “exit customs”? Wangen-Lachen used to have that.
Peter wrote:
Which Swiss airports still have “exit customs”?
Here is the Douane ie Customs page for little old Bex Aerodrome. https://www.aerobex.ch/c/douane.html Bex is an aeroclub airfield with a 700 m grass strip. If Bex accepts inbound and outbound Schengen flights, with the simple processing on an online form (in English BTW), then I suspect most of them do.
