With some luck my flight from Nuremberg EDDN to Sabadell LELL via Avignon LFMV will be in blue skies. Given the position of Nuremberg the direct route from there to Avignon goes right over Switzerland. So I’m wondering how to take the scenic route and see the Alps in full glory.
autorouter gives me the route I already know. It follows the lakes and sends me to ARGIS and then into France. I would like to stay further south and probably see the Mont Blanc from the other side.
I just tried to use a few Swiss waypoints as fly-by points but that gave me unsuitable routes. I know I can put a VFR segment into my IFR flight plan. autorouter also produced some of that sort.
Any suggestions on how to take the scenic route?
The easiest is to cancel IFR and then if weather helps you go south from Bern towards the Jungfrau, pass overhead the Brienz lake and south at Meiringen, that’ll bring you to Wallis very close to the Aletsch glacier. From there keep south to Zermatt, see the Matterhorn, pass behind it and take the valley that takes you on a west-south-westerly heading to Val d’Aosta and smack behind the Mont Blanc from where you can angle a bit south and see the Val d’Isere / Tignes / 3 Valleys area.
I am also searching similar information – for possible extension of Frirdrichshafen trip next year. But on top of that I get a request from my potential PAX – “I want to stay overnight at some village, some kind of remote place, having an meadow view with cows during breakfast”. not sure if this is the right forum to ask but asking anyway. I am considering eliminating immigration in Swiss by staying overnight somewhere France – so just overflying Swiss.
Fly to Gap and you should find plenty remote places around – problem is how you get to them.
Well if you wish to stay overnight, there used to be a hotel at Gap airfield too.
Inter-Hôtel Le Cap if www sources are to be believed.
Your pax’s request might be best met by some “Agroturismo” in Northern Italy, many have a runway. But it might be too far out of your way and getting fuel might be an issue. Most of those runways are rather short, too. Perhaps Bosco has some recommendation?
Here is just one to wet your appetite. Look twice at the state of the runway, though… (not connected to the place in any way, nor have I ever visited. It looks nice, though).
Yesterday I was flying through Switzerland on my way to Avignon. I asked Swiss Radar about the scenic tour but there reply was “the military is flying”. I guess they use that area on blue sky days for practice. Not much space around elsewhere. I now understand why there are no airways in that particular part of Swiss airspace. 
You can get that information upfront from the DABS (daily airspace bulletin Switzerland). If you use the Telegram BOT, just ask it:
Thanks. Yes. I looked at it before but not on the day in question. Once in blue skies with some time to spare I couldn’t resist the temptation to ask. There will be plenty of nice days ahead …
Okay, so a very important thing to know is that other than the active military areas (which you can still cross if you coordinate with them), the airspace is class E up to FL 130 when the military is active. FL130 is more than enough for the scenic tour. I usually do it at FL 100 to get better views (and no headaches for the passengers). The only time you’ll need to be higher is when you cross into Italy – and you can ask for permission if you want to climb early in the valley. Otherwise you can hug the right hand ridge (right hand traffic in the valleys) and you’ll be in E airspace anyway.
Thanks. I was at FL170 and thus in General Class C and thus I would have had to descend, really cancel IFR and later dealt with the pickup to join IFR with French ATC or Swiss before crossing the FIR boundary. But then I didn’t want miss lunch in Avignon on that day.
But at least it sounded like Swiss Radar would have let me do the tour IFR via Sion at FL170 without the military flying there. Not exactly the very same as the real scenic route but close to it.
Next time …
