I flew for some years in central Europe and it was quite GA friendly, with access to city airports and reasonable charges. After twenty years how has the accessibility changed? Is Avgas still available and how prohibitive are handling charges?
Czechia maintains its long-standing aviation traditions and is quite GA friendly. The current AIP shows 7 IFR aerodromes open to civilian traffic, 83 VFR-only ones (some of them with hard runways), and 57 registered ultralight strips. Landing charges for a typical SEP are around 25 EUR at IFR airports (except LKPR) and handling is not required. VFR airfields usually charge 3 to 8 EUR. Avgas is available, but don’t count on round-the-clock availability. For detailed information, go to https://aim.rlp.cz/.
Well…
Brno is significantly more expensive than 25€.
Poland has changed a lot over the last 20 years. Most IFR airports used to be no handling. Now you always spend 100€ total, or more. See Lodz, Poznan, Rheszow, Szczecin. One of the few exceptions is Gdansk, where you still get away with 25€. What I still like about Poland is that most airports have no PPR (well, in most cases you contact the handling beforehand anyway, but it‘s not a PPR, really).
Airspace is still a mess in Poland. In know, most
military areas are rarely active, but some are, and they have weird shapes, which sometimes block your way.
Avgas is difficult at the smaller airfields in Poland.
Baltics: lovely countries, benefitting from low traffic. Avgas in just a very few places nowadays. The three capital airports are very expensive, and with the exception of Riga, there is no nearby cheap VFR airport. Visit the Estonian islands, plus Nida.
boscomantico wrote:
Brno is significantly more expensive than 25€.
Just checked the AIP, the landing fee is still 300 CZK (~12 EUR) per tonne. Maybe you got hit by a passenger charge of 400 CZK per departing PAX?
Ultranomad wrote:
Just checked the AIP, the landing fee is still 300 CZK (~12 EUR) per tonne. Maybe you got hit by a passenger charge of 400 CZK per departing PAX?
Here’s a simulation, made from the airport pricelist and confirmed by them, of the budget with 20h of parking for a >1t <2t plane:
Handling 650 CZK
Landing 2*300 CZK = 600 CZK
Parking 20h: 20*2*14 CZK = 560 CZK
Total: 1810 CZK + VAT 21% = 2190 CZK
Slovakia is a lovely country, with nice mountains, beautiful castles and tasty food. Big airports with IFR are also quite expensive though with handling. If you contact local aeroclubs in advance, they might help you out and prevent high handling costs. Poprad-Tatry for example is a lovely place for sightseeing, but parking on the tarmac is expensive, as you need handling. However, if you arrange a place in the aeroclub hangar in advance, you pay just 10-15€ per night and avoid further handling costs. Landing fees are very low though. Similar procedures should also be observed for Koštice and Žilina.
Unfortunately, Avgas on smaller GA aerodromes is often not available. They do have inofficial Mogas sometimes, but you need to arrange it in advance and you get no receipt. Be aware that most grass airfields are PPR in Slovakia and it’s difficult to get permission outside the weekends. Small aerodromes with concrete/asphalt runways are open during VFR daylight times or PPR is easy to obtain.
Flying itself is very easy in Slovakia, the airspace is not complicated. CTR’s and TMA’s are quite big though, but transits are not a problem at all. I don’t fly IFR though.
I usually use either LZTT, EPRZ, LKTB or LJMB depending on route. Those are all IFR airfields with AVGAS.
LJMB and LZTT are in or near mountain terrain though. Further west LJPZ and to the south LYBE (cheap fuel but e-mail to belgrade flight coordination before).
LKTB charges 12 EUR per ton so 24 EUR for my TB21 of 1400 kg but they also add 27 EUR for basic handling. Still acceptable though.
