LYBE - Belgrade

Last time I used

[in fairness to the individuals, I have replaced the email links with graphics so they are not trivially machine readable – Peter]

That’s my experience, too. They don’t answer emails. That’s also why I never “request PPR” in any emails. I write that it’s a “flight notification”.

It seems they don’t care, even though it’s in the AIP. I drop them a line and I’m done.

I flew in there to officially leave the EU for 10 mins in 2013. I filed IFR with RR and I believe I also called them and spoke to the Handling agent. All went very smooth. Make sure you bring extra gas cans. The fuel is almost as cheap as the vodka.

Belgrade always answered me on that email, usually within a few hours. Actually I am there right now.

Unfortunately the fuel situation is getting worse and worse there. I am used to “fuel truck is busy, you have to wait” but usually it takes 5-10 min. Today they outright refused to fuel my aircraft due to “too many airliners”. That is very annoying and I am fighting with them as we speak.

Too bad, Belgrade was the perfect GA tech stop place for some time. Now please CB/TCUs on my route — stop developing!

Got an answer from this address, maybe because i wrote in Serbian ;-)

Also, this is the right man for fuel:

I got the information that Avgas can be a problem at the following local times:
05-07h; 11-14h; 16-18h, all LT, because of high traffic

[in fairness to the individuals, I have replaced the email links with graphics so they are not trivially machine readable – Peter]

Yesterday saw a great deal of CBs over the Alps late yesterday afternoon as I was having dinner overlooking the Stamberger See. Of course my thoughts went out to my fellow Euro Ga member, poster, and fellow aviation enthusiast, Achim who had planned to fly yesterday. I had thought that if Achim was returning as opposed to continuing on south he would have to circumvent the Alps buildup. The line over the Alps was pretty solid so coming from the south would have been very interesting if not impossible. My thinking was if Ackim finally did get fuel he would FP for Hungary and then the route north of Wien to Stuttgart area. Of course since it was the beginning of a holiday he was probably heading south over more mountains and late day buildups.

So Im curious Achim what eventually happened?

Alive and kicking. The biggest issue was the cumulus nimbus who runs the monopolist fuel company in Belgrade. They let me wait for 3.5h for fuel, citing too much work. Behind me was a CJ2+ crew on tight schedule who were given preferred treatment — only 3h waiting!

The weather to Belgrade was benign, not a lot of convective energy in the clouds. The 3.5h in Belgrade surely made it difficult. It turned out that they had closed large parts of the Serbian airspace up to FL280 for anti hail measures (little planes with silver iodide cannons) but obviously that was where most of the CBs were so the vectoring east wasn’t that bad at all. I also realized that Serbia now appears to have complete radar coverage — no more giving position reports every 5 minutes to a guy in a cellar in Nis somewhere with a $5 microphone

I usually try to establish an altitude where I have the best chance circumnavigating but that was really tough. I tried FL170 initially, thought about going FL200 but didn’t think it would be better and tried it at FL150. That was good for a while until FL170 would have been better again. In Macedonia (the country that everybody but the Greek considers to be Macedonia) the way was often blocked but when I had the feeling that the buildup was small, I went through it, always set the HDG-Bug to where it looked better before doing that. Very little turbulence but a bit of ice. Once in Thessaloniki, it got better but Greek ATC was super busy approving avoidance vectors. I could pretty much continue direct to Iraklion. The convective activity slowed down a lot in the late afternoon and when I arrived at sunset, it was nice.

I learned one thing: when Ryanair ask for avoid vectors, those vectors miraculously always coincide with a DCT to their destination. I have to memorize that trick, could save me a lot of time.

BTW: The Greek CAA pulled fantastic stunt. A Thompson plane from the UK to Uganda diverted to Iraklion and was parked about 500m from the AVGAS fuelling station. Therefore the Greek CAA decreed the AVGAS fuelling station to be shut down and I could not get fuel. I was already worried about more creative problems this morning but all went extremely smooth and I departed before EOBT. In general, Iraklion was efficient and good, a real asset to GA in Greece (as opposed to Sitia!).

The flight onward to Alexandria was a piece of cake and the stop there was quick and efficient so I could depart ahead of schedule to El Gouna (HE01, formerly HEGO, 15NM north of HEGN Hurghada). This time they let me do a “scenic” traffic pattern which to me means carte blanche

Thanks for the trip report.

I just passed through Belgrade (LYBE) again and was reminded how much I like the airport. Not only is there super cheap fuel (roughly 1.1 EUR) but fees for a real international airport are moderate: for my 1050 MTOW plane I paid a total of 29 EUR, of which 15 EUR was for handling, for a technical stop (did not refuel this time). There’s a nice VIP lounge for international arrivals. They are efficient and friendly. Skopje (LWSK) is much the same.

So those of you flying to the South might consider routing through the Balkan interior.