The phrase “unattended airports” is a bit unclear.
There are very few “airports” in Europe which are open at all when unattended, and at some even if you could, you might have to climb over a barbed wire fence to get out at 3am (unless you know how to) 
But in most countries you can land on private land (with permission etc) without anybody being present.
LeSving wrote:
But it looks to me IFR requires special permission from LT as well as towe
Those documents are specific to Oppdal. It is not uncommon to require authorisation to perform certain IFR procedures like in Bolzano, Lugano, or Sion for example.
Hamar used to have an NDB approach and as far as I remember that did not require the tower to be manned. There was even an accident there where a SEP crashed after attempting to land below minima and running out of fuel, instead of diverting to Gardermoen because his passengers had their cars at Hamar.
At least in France, there are lots of airports where you can land even if there is nobody in the tower. I regularly land at Courchevel on a Monday, when the tower is unmanned or at Lyon-Bron after AFIS hours. Formally you will have to speak A/A in French, which I do with the few words of French that I master.
Jacko wrote:
So if y’all decide to fly in here tomorrow morning, there’s b—-all I can do about it.
If the weather wasn’t cack I would have taken you up on that offer :-)
The phrase “unattended airports” is a bit unclear.
Indeed. Might we assume
“Unattended” => “Non-radio”
“Airport” => “aerodrome”
?
Not in Austria.
At least not without express written consent from the local authorities and landowner.
It is basically the same as Germany: all airports are towered with operating hours (typically, it is sunup to sundown, but there are a few night operations airfields).
I’m not sure if there are any private airfields…
That is not really “the same as Germany” : German aerodromes have the choice of registering either with published operating hours or without – the latter option essentially making them PPR.
Allow me to warn against the term “private airfield”, it is very much open to interpretation. To some, it may mean “a runway in the back garden, meant to be used only by the owner and her/his invited guests” whereas in other contexts it may mean “any aerodrome that is not public”. For example all club airfields in BE are formally “private” though in practice one just flies there, sometimes even forgetting the (officially) mandatory PPR call before take-off
In the UK all non-military airfields are effectively private, even Heathrow, though there is the concept of the public-use licence.
and, setting aside considerations of common courtesy and airmanship, a landowner’s permission is generally not required in Scotland, thanks to the Land Reform (Scotland) Act.
Does this mean that off-airport back country flying is possible – like all those amazing videos from Idaho and Alaska?
though there is the concept of the public-use licence.
I wonder what that actually means in the UK. In the USA public access is a condition of FAA (taxpayer) funding and that is a very big stick.
I have been told that an UK airfield with a Public License (e.g. Shoreham) cannot discriminate against specific operators, so if e.g. they get somebody departing half an hour before the airport opens, or ignoring the requirements for out of hours ops, etc, the airport cannot do anything about it which hits that operator only. But if an airfield is on a Private License (e.g. Goodwood) then they can kick that operator out.
As to why be Licensed at all… the CAA will take legal action to block some landowner (whose land goes right up to your runway end) growing huge conifers and forcing you to have a threshold so far displaced that it excludes half the traffic. An unlicensed airfield has no protection. You also need to be Licensed for AOC ops, which can be a big revenue source. One manager told me the ~ 10k license fee to the CAA is worth paying, and all those airfields which went unlicensed as soon as ab initio PPL training no longer required a License will one day regret it as local landowners gradually shaft them over.
I have the above from airport managers actually in the business… hopefully my recollection is right.
