Does anyone know what happens if one lands a Piper Cub at a ULM field in Portugal (or for that matter Spain)? MTOW 547kg, actual flight weight somewhat less but probably more than 450kg. In any case, the airplane can handle the shortness of the field with no problem. The issue is two fold: do the authorities have a coronary, even with PPR? And secondly, is hull coverage invalid for the flight? To make matters, worse, its N registered.
Of course, technically everything is all wrong and it can’t be done, though I am more interested in pragmatic real world reality. I would suspect that the authorities in Iberia wouldn’t notice (Everybody thinks its a ULM anyway) and insurance….that’s a question. Policy says that the field must be “appropriate,” which it is for the airplane, though I could see that opinion being debatable in the event of a wreck.
I feel inclined to suspect most of those fields will be PPR anyway, so you’ll know before taking off. That is to say, you are supposed to.
The effective weight is totally irrelevant, the one thing that counts is MTOW.
And do count on this: today’s insurers are very strong at finding reasons for not paying out. Even if the a/d operator has no issue with your landing your plane, if an accident happens you will have offered the insurers their excuse on a gold plate: landing was illegal. Surely they’ll interpret the “appropriate” bit in the narrowest way possible. “Illegal” doesn’t meet, not at all.
Observe PPR and do what you want. As long as you stay out of trouble, it’s unlikely anyone will ask questions. I haven’t flown in Span or Portugal, but those rules apply in stricter European countries and in life in general. I think it is dangerous to allow insurance considerations to control your life. Fly carefully and try to be competent!
All the indications are that nobody will notice. Lots of things like this are done all the time. However, depending on how precisely the situation is defined, your insurance may not be valid because insurance is always based on the flight being legal. That means no passenger insurance, which is probably the most likely post-crash “personal asset stripping vector” 
I would ask, are you legal to land there and is the field long enough? If so it is difficult to see how it is inappropriate.
About one minute of Google gets you this: http://www.nav.pt/en/ais/vfr-manual/vfr-manual
While I have neither the time nor the interest to read through it, it prob90 answers your question.
In February 2013, and again in 2014, long before I suspected that a few neo-totalitarian(?) European governments might presume to dictate how and where an airman may land his own flying machine, I filed VFR flight plans and flew a Cessna 150/150 to and from the Lagos “ultralight” airfield. No one batted an eyelid.
So it seems that, for all practical purposes, the government of Portugal and its officials are more inclined to mind their own business than some of their more easterly counterparts.
AFAIU in Spain things have changed. If you talk about non state-run fields, the distinction between UL and Certified has disappeared. It’s a matter of determining whether the field is appropriate for a particular aircraft type. But the airfield operator of a former UL-field needs to apply for a permit that heavier than UL (472 kg MTOM) are allowed to land there. Here in Mallorca there are 3 official ‘UL’ fields (and an unknown number of (ahem) ‘semi-official’ ones). One operator does not have such a permit and therefore landing a Cub there would be illegal. The second field has such a permit and the owner/operator of the 3rd field could not care less who/what flies in there
AFAIU there is vfr flightplan mandatory in spain!
unless u fly below 1500ft AGL and “claim” u are an UL
Peter wrote:
However, depending on how precisely the situation is defined, your insurance may not be valid because insurance is always based on the flight being legal. That means no passenger insurance, which is probably the most likely post-crash “personal asset stripping vector”
The tems & conditions from Inter Hannover (one of the major GA insurers in Sweden) does not base insurance “on the flight being legal”. There are specific conditions that make the insurance void. Breaking operational rules, such as landing at an airfield without proper permission does not make the insurance void as long as it is unrelated to the accident. So if you land a normal category aircraft at a UL-only airfield and crash, the insurance will pay out as long as the airfield was otherwise suitable for landing.
