Hi!
I plan to visit Lake Como in the first week of April. I am targeting Sondrio Airport and then taking a car. Do you have any feedback or experience from your side? I have not decided yet whether to fly IFR and dive into the valley or fly all down from Hungary in the valleys. Until Bolzano is OK, I don’t see a pass from the Bolzano Area to Sondrio. It seems that I have to climb over the peaks 10K+ feet. Do you have any thoughts?
Zsolt
TB20
You could fly towards Garda lake and then westwards to Sondrio. There are smaller valleys between Bolzano and Sondrio, but yes you need to climb a bit to get there :)
I don’t see a pass from the Bolzano Area to Sondrio. It seems that I have to climb over the peaks 10K+ feet. Do you have any thoughts?
Without looking at a map closely, but having ridden a motorcycle countless times along that route, my first thought is that Mendola Pass reaches 4469 ft and Paso Tonale reaches 6178 ft.
The Valtellina further west one of most prominent east-west routes in the Alps and takes you to Sondrio.
Or the scenic northerly (much longer / detour) north-west towards Resia/Reschen Pass and then west-south-west via Samedan, to the north of Lake Como and then around the corner back towards Sondrio.
Sondrio Airport
Question: is it open for general public? Wasn’t it somehow reserved for the Italian air force?
RV14 wrote:
Question: is it open for general public? Wasn’t it somehow reserved for the Italian air force?
Open with PPR according to https://www.aviovaltellina.it/aviosuperficie/come-arrivare/ and the comments on SkyDemon as recently as October suggest the same, but I, too, hope for some first/second-hand experience to come along into this thread :-)
It’s a regular (civilian) aviosuperficie, not an aeroporto. I don’t think it was ever military use, at least in the last twenty years. Maybe a mixup?
So yes, PPR of course, but this is more the usual formality.
See also here
In general, aviosuperfici are now tightening up on PPR, or rather, prior notification, and often now insist on a form being filled in before flying. In the past, most aviosuperfici did not care much about these things (even though the obligation to log movements existed also before).
THX
Paso Tonale reaches 6178 ft.
sorry for the thread drift, but talking about the Paso Tonale, how does one obtain permission to land there? Last year I tried the formal channels, but no luck
This page has the info, the relevant regulations and the form to request permission (precisely: the exemption from the general ban on landing there). But it is all in Italian and anyway, permission is essentially only given to a small circle of local flying schools. Forget it. The runway (very rocky) is also probably still covered in snow right now.
This photo (not mine) conveys the beauty of the place:
