I’ve booked the club plane that I use (Piper Arrow) for the whole weekend (14th-16th) and would like to spread my wings a little further than I’ve done before. I would like to go to Saint Jean-de-Luz. Called there on a cruise once and thought is was a lovely place. rough plan is EGBE to Guernsey on the Friday evening then Saturday fly to either LESO or FFBZ. I don’t have my IR back from the CAA yet, neither do I have access to an IFR capable plane as yet, so the trip will be VFR. Having searched the forum for some info on both, I’m not encouraged. LESO seems mandatory handling for non schengen flights, which this would be. LFBZ looks pretty similar and I’m really green when it comes to interrogating the AIP and understanding the PNR, PPR, Customs notice period etc, I would appreciate a little help. If its too much hassle, can someone suggest somewhere less stressful for a first flight deeper into France.
I would always get it straight from the horse’s mouth. Get the email address from the AIP and send them something like
If sending this to an airport in Spain or Italy, assume there is no English spoken so add a google translation e.g.
Sometimes google translate screws up stuff e.g. it translates names so “Baker” might get translated! So fix that up manually. You can see that above it translated “Joe Bloggs” into “Juan Pérez” 
To find the AIP, google for
Spanish AIP
usually works and it is here
For LESO you get
Normally, I don’t fly to any airport which doesn’t respond, unless it is known to be a well organised H24 one which “just works” e.g. Prague, or I am desperate to go there in which case I contact a local language speaking pilot and ask him to phone them up.
Thanks for your help Peter.
I would add that Spanish airports traditionally do not reply to any communications but in the case of email there is always the nagging doubt that they didn’t get it, so if you don’t get a reply the next day, re-send it.
Personally, anything sent to these countries I always copy to fax 
French AIP is here The rest is a bit of a bugger but you want the eAIP France which for aerodromes is here
It looks like Biarritz LFBZ is 24hrs PNR for Customs (meaning Immigration )
So shoot off the usual emails in good time…
You could waste a bit of your life wondering whether the “Police” inside the above red rectangle" is “Immigration” (a stupid ambiguity – who wants to speak to police at an airport?) but it’s easier to shoot off the email to everybody and see what comes back.
A good Schengen stop, all of €4.80, is Caen LFRK. Everything is done airside, very quickly. I did a bunch of trips into smaller fields in France in 2013 and used that each time. On one of the return flights there was a massive CB over Caen which was awfully inconvenient because I had to divert straight to Shoreham
I landed at LESO last year. I used Calais as the first stop, so that I was inside Schengen. No problems at LESO. Very laid back. no handling. One local rule when you taxy off the runway, you turn left and stop the aircraft on a marked out square, stop the engine and then push it back into your parking spot. Go for it.
I have emailed both LESO and LFBZ. Both responded within 10mins (on a Sunday!) LFBZ said no parking available for 15/16 and LESO referred me to their AIP which states mandatory handing and gave me the email address of Iberia. But now, both the Airport and Iberia are asking for ETA and ETD. LFRK may be a better option than EGJB.
Just give them approximate times.
No parking…. yeah right. La Rochelle once told me they were going to have [some crazy number like 30] of bizjets arriving, so my plane HAD to be out of the way on the rocks (they have reasonable grass now). Actual situation:
These people drink too much wine and smoke the wrong stuff.
Yes, Biarritz is a ridiculous airport. A rare exception for France though.
The “no handling” days in San Sebastian seem to be definitely over. Probably a consequence of the airport management having got fed up with private pilots running all over the place and bugging various staff “where can I pay my landing fee?”, “where can I file a flight plan”, etc.
My understanding is that LESO does not require mandatory handling for small aircraft that are intra-Schengen – as per OP’s view.
This was the case on 26th June 2015 when I flew in from Cascais. It seemed to me a very good-natured place with light aircraft coming and going – without handling – on the few stands on the GA apron.
The “no handling” days in San Sebastian seem to be definitely over. Probably a consequence of the airport management having got fed up with private pilots running all over the place and bugging various staff “where can I pay my landing fee?”, “where can I file a flight plan”, etc.
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt for the moment, but this looks alarmingly like FUD.
Well, as you probably know, the problem is that in the Spanish AIP, there is a blanket requirement for the pilot to organize handling at every airport he will fly to.
So when you e-mail them and ask for PPR, and they reply to contact handling, there is very little one can do.
