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Jetprop to Europe. Summer 2019

Hi forum,
I am provisionally planning on bringing my Jetprop back to Europe from Thailand next summer then use it to tour around Europe. There are some summer festivals in mainland Europe I would like to attend (non aviation related) and since I am out of date with which European airports are GA friendly I was hoping that some of you would chip in with some recommendations.

Aircraft is 1,950Kg MTOW, Turbine, but under the old Malibu PA46 designation. I would prefer to self-handle. Jet A1 will be required: Since I will be based in UK, CIQ is going to be a requirement. :-)

I would like to operate at EHLE Leystad at the end of June. I did operate from there 7 years ago, and it was pretty straightforward. Is it still GA friendly with immigration available?

I was able to self-handle there before. Is this still the case, and who is the best contact to arrange landing/parking?

Same question for all of these. I will probably be parking 4-5 days each time. I prefer a hard runway, but would take a well maintained grass runway. 800M onwards would be fine.

LOWS Salzburg – July

I need a suitable airport within travelling distance of Boom middle/end of July. in Belgium. Are any of the main airports viable for GA these days in Belgium?

LRLC – Cluj Napoca, Romania. August. Is this an airport of entry? I have searched the forum for Romania but I have not come across anybody visiting here.

Venice LIPV seems doable? Mid August.

That is the wishlist for now. :-)

Cheers – E

eal
Lovin' it
VTCY VTCC VTBD

Must be awesome trip to make eal!

Having flown a lot in The Netherlands I can answer a couple of questions for you.

eal wrote:

I would like to operate at EHLE Leystad at the end of June. I did operate from there 7 years ago, and it was pretty straightforward. Is it still GA friendly with immigration available?

Yes, the airport is still straightforward. There is construction going on at the moment to be able to use the airport for scheduled commercial flights. Those flights will not start till 2020 at earliest. Contact details for Lelystad airport are available here
Handling is not required at EHLE.

When you are flying in The Netherlands you should try to visit Texel, EHTX. With an 1100m grass runway capable to receive Fokker 100 and Citation jets it should be fine for your aircraft. Beautiful island and the friendliest airport staff in North Western Europe!

Boom → EBAW. If you have a car there are other options, but all of them further away than AW.

EBST, Belgium

PapaBravo wrote:

There is construction going on at the moment

All finished

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

eal wrote:

I would like to operate at EHLE Leystad at the end of June

As others have said Lelystad no problem, nor are the other Dutch airfields (EHGG EHRD etc) especially as now most of France wants 24 hrs notice for us that are UK based …. so we go to Holland and Belgium instead.

.eal wrote:

Are any of the main airports viable for GA these days in Belgium?

Ostend EBOS and Wevelgem EBKT both have customs, very friendly, no hassle.

PapaBravo wrote:

When you are flying in The Netherlands you should try to visit Texel, EHTX

I agree, great place, customs on short notice, grass in really good condition, ditto Midden Zeeland EHMZ

Excellent picture!
Thanks all for the great info so far!
Cheers. E

eal
Lovin' it
VTCY VTCC VTBD

Salzburg is also no trouble in Summer.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Many thanks.
Does anybody have any experience operating out of the larger Romanian airports? LRLC is the one l am mainly interested in but l guess info in general about GA and handling etc would be a useful place to start.
Cheers. E

eal
Lovin' it
VTCY VTCC VTBD

eal,

first of all, bear in mind that Europe is not a country. It’s collection of countries, which all still have some subtly different aviation regulation, vastly different infrastructure, etc. It is therefore difficult to discuss “Europe”, as it’s a bit different across the single countries.
That said, you will be fine and enjoy it. None of the countries in political Europe require overflight permits. There is Jet-A fuel pretty much everywhere (except at some of the very small GA airfields, which you will likely not fly into).

As a general rule, I recommend you notify your flights and your requirements to all the airports you want to fly into a few days in advance. Now, in many places in Euroe this isn’t even necessary, and there is a lot of discussion here whether one should as for PPR at airports that don’t formally require PPR…but for you on a one-off trip like yours, I think it is better to ask once too much and once too little. As an example (and this you will know), in the UK, almost every airport is PPR to begin with. In other countries, it is often parking which is PPR, particularly around the Med in the summer.

Generally, the place to contact for infos / PPR tends to be the airfield operator, as listed in the AIP (drop them an email, and tell and them your ETA, ETD, etc.). Oh yes, get all the airports’ AIP entries for the places you want to fly into. All European AIPs are available for free on the internet (EAS, autorouter, or SkyDemon). And do check NOTAMs well in advance.

Re handling vs. self-handling,, this topic is very long and diverse in Europe. In general, in Europe, in places where handling is considered mandatory, you will be automatically offered the service (whatever it may be; after all, “handling” is not even a normed term). They will normally tell you in reply to your mail enquiry to the airport. In some place, the landing/parking/handling fees will be a little steep, but again, if this is a one-off trip, than these will not make much of a difference to your total costs. Just avoid the very big airline airports, as they can sometimes be north of 500 Euros.

More specfically: in Romania, you will be fine. There is not a whole lot of GA there, so the airports aren’t very well geared towards handling GA flights, but since most of these airports aren’t very busy, it will be alright and you will usually have their full attention. Romanian airports are not dirt cheap, but not too expensive either. Remember Romania is still non-Schengen, so you need to pass customs (immigration to be preicse) on both ends of the flights. Yes, Cluj of course is an airport of entry. Check the Romanian AIP.

Salzburg, just like essentially all airports in Austria and Germany, is totally straight-foward, hassle-free and not too expensive.

Belgium: Kortrijk, Ostend, Charleroi and Antwerp are totally fine and not expensive. Liège is a bit expensive, and Brussels is very expensive.

Re Venice: just bear in mind that mid August is right in the middle of the holiday season, so there will be lots of tourists everywhere.If I can give you a pice of advice, avoid the Med between mid July and the end of August. Why not go to some places further north during that time? (Scotland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Baltics, Poland…).

Last Edited by boscomantico at 01 Jan 20:55
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

As you will need quite some JetA1 often the bigger airports which are a bit more expensive on fees turn out much cheaper overall. Small airfields tend to have expensive JetA1 over here. Also consider signing up for fuel cards as those often make a huge difference compared to the JetA1 sticker prices.

www.ing-golze.de
EDAZ
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