Trip Report - Spain and Morocco

Approach into Tangier – very windy 35kt straight down the runway. This presented some challenges with taxiing.

At the time we had to fill in arrival and departure cards for EVERY airport we visited in Morocco, so pre-filling these and photocopying them saves a lot of time. Apparently this process has stopped now. The landing fee at Tangier was €2.10 and it took them around 20 minutes to calculate this (I am not joking). We also had a very friendly visit from the police who also brought an incredibly lazy sniffer dog to look over the aircraft.

We went on to Rabat (GMME) and then Fes (GMFF). Nothing really to report at Rabat – Avgas was plentiful and came with a fuel bowser. Fes was more tricky – everything was hand pumped and took a while. Note that all fuel needs to be paid in Euros and they don’t give you change (essentially the fuel man sees the non-change as his tip), so important to take smaller Euro notes.

The red carpet store, wasn’t rolled out for us:

From Fes, we went to Errachidia (GMFK) which is basically a VERY long runway, a big empty building and a control tower. The scenery on the way was stunning:

More manual fuel pumping

Views in the desert

And then back up to Tangier via Marrakesh

In terms of flying in Morocco, I’ve got some helpful tips / hints – do ask below if you want more detail or questions on anything else:

• You have to file a flight plan for every leg. This can easily be done on RocketRoute. I know people used SkyDemon which seemed to be ok but often missed bits off so they’d have to then go to the office and do it manually. In particular, FPL transmissions exclude emergency equipment, which they need to know
• You MUST fly along prescribed VFR routes. There basically isn’t much radar 50 miles east of Casablanca, so in reality they don’t check, but as soon as you take off you will be asked for estimates at EVERY single reporting point along the route (and some are quite hard to pronounce!). If you’re late, they will tell you you’re late, but we didn’t see any consequence of this
• Note the cash for fuel point that I mention above. We didn’t manage to pay by credit card anywhere. Apart from them keeping the change, we didn’t get ripped off anywhere. I’ve had bad experiences with “handling” in Italy, for example – none of that here.
• In general, ATC is helpful and their English is good. You won’t have any trouble here.
• Whilst they are very polite at airports, they are also very officious in the sense that there is A LOT of paperwork and most of this paperwork is done by hand. If you’re with a group, don’t feel bad about leaving the airport when you’re done. Equally, try to arrive either first or last, else you will spend a long time hanging around (especially for fuel)
• We were lucky with the weather in Morocco (Spain less so in the next post) but it can change very rapidly, especially in the mountains. Be very careful on this, particularly with WX planning because their forecasts (and even actuals) are frequently wrong
• You need permission to enter Morocco in the first place – the authorisation number goes into your flight plan. You won’t be permitted to leave Spain or Gibraltar without this having been “accepted” by the Moroccans, so file with plenty of time

This is where it got interesting. To say the least.

Took off early doors from Tangier to Almeria, easy departure and passed by Gibraltar. Upon passing Malaga, we were informed that there was a “problem” and that Almeria was closed because of a contaminated runway, but may open again “shortly”.

Hey, we’re in a helicopter, who needs a runway?

Apparently in Spain, to land a helicopter, a serviceable runway is mandatory.
- “The airport is closed, runway contamination”
- “We’re in a helicopter, we don’t need a runway”
- “The airport is closed. Please divert”

So off we go to Murcia (LEMI). Then disaster strikes – we get a 20kt (unforecast) head wind.

For those of you who know the R44, the fuel tank is 36.5 gallons in total, but Robinson doesn’t have any fuel burn charts in the POH at all, so it’s anyone’s guess on how much you’re actually burning. The fuel gauges are notoriously inaccurate and there’s no fuel totaliser. There is however, a totally separate system, which is the “Low Fuel” light. This indicates that you have “10 minutes” of fuel remaining, but it can be more.

Anyway, 20 minutes away from Murcia, we get the low fuel light. 11 minutes on, we think our luck may have run out so we land in a field:

Minor inconvenience it seems, and fortunately we find someone who calls us a taxi. Plan is to get some fuel cans, fill them up with Avgas at Murcia, then back to the helicopter. Turns out that Murcia was as closed as Almeria after a big storm, nobody has turned up to ATC and all commercial flights are cancelled. After renting a car, we then find out that Muchamiel (nor any airport in Spain) will let you fill up fuel cans with Avgas. This is just another example of where Spanish regulations conflict with practical realities.

Helpfully though, the R44 has a carburetor and is not fuel-injected. So we went to a petrol station and filled up with high-octane petrol and added in some lead additive (readily available in Spain):

Fuelled up, car returned, we were back in the air! This gives an idea of some of the damage done by the storm, and why all the airports were closed:

Landed at Muchamiel, for more fuel – grey skies:

Then it was the 2-hour crossing to Mallorca. The weather forecast looked like this:

After an “interesting” crossing, we made it…. with three empty jerry cans on the back seat:

In retrospect, we probably should have just declared a PAN at Almeria so they would have been forced to let us land. Sure, the paperwork would have been a pain, but at the same time we would have got fuel and gone on. I would like to criticise myself on poor planning, but actually hard to do here – there was no indication that airports were closed when we took off, and in any case they kept telling us that Almeria would open “in 20 minutes” despite being able to see (when we arrived) that it was never a realistic option. Additionally, we couldn’t divert to places to the north (e.g. Granada) due to weather and the risk of flying in the mountains. What this DOES say to me though is that it’s astounding how bureaucracy holds no bounds, and on occasions that ranks ahead of safety.

172driver wrote:

With a helo you could possibly have gone to one of the UL fields between Almeria and Murcia. From memory there are a few in that area, although not sure they’re still operational.

We couldn’t find one with Avgas actually – another advantage with the heli is you’re always quite low so you can make phone calls through the bluetooth

Ibra wrote:

Did you fly VFR from Spain to Morocco? For VFR, I understand FPL routes needs to be manually validated by the arrival airport

Yes we did. Frankly the most helpful thing was being in the tower at Gibraltar as they speak English (obviously) and were generally efficient.