Alderney EGJA July 2019

Many of us have done day trips to Alderney but this time Justine and I did a 3 day stay, for my birthday

Last year we did the Scilly Isles for a few days, which was wonderful. Alderney is much more the back of beyond but there is plenty to see for a few days – even if you just want to get away from it all and walk around the countryside and the beaches.

The flight to Alderney from Shoreham can be done several ways. The easy way is

EGKA GWC ORIST EGJA

which avoids the D036 danger area complex (inactive on weekends, usually)

If you check D036 ets is inactive, you can go EGKA ORIST EGJA. Alternate was Shoreham (the dashed line).

Up to the Jersey zone this is Class G and if you file at say 5000ft, IFR, you won’t get a service from London Control, or anybody else really, so in the usual UK custom you are a VFR flight But Jersey will see you are IFR so you can ask for an IAP if you need it without any delays; same with flying to France in this way. Solent or Bournemouth may give you a service for a bit… but no clearances into any CAS.

To do it “fully IFR” you would need to file for something like FL070/080. Anything less, London Controls bins the flight plan. But it’s not worth doing for such a short trip; at 5000ft you have 5 mins before you hit the water if the engine fails, which is plenty. Also flying at ~5000ft avoids any risk of infringing CAS on this route, which is always a plus, under the “new CAA policy”

Jersey let us fly at the 5000ft most of the way to Alderney. Not sure if this is because we were IFR, or if there has been a recent change; this refers. Jersey radar has a huge range – probably all the way to the UK coast – and gives an excellent service.

The day started with solid fog over the Channel Islands, OVC000, so I waited till it was above the IAP minima before departing for the 45 min flight. On the way I got the wx via the ADL150 satellite wx receiver and it was still IFR so I asked for the RNAV26, but by the time we flew that, it had lifted

The airport cafe is really pretty basic; even a hot choc is pretty basic

I wonder who has a business there?

They have proper 3 phase power

The main street – Victoria Street

Not a lot showing in the cinema

Some local boat trips

One of the vast number of WW2 German fortifications

Guernsey runs the airport and they love everyone being very safe; yellow jackets are mandatory! This guy was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery; one of the rare cases of a live person getting one

The road leading to the long jetty and the Bray Hotel (we stayed at a great airb&b apartment, Villa Mondrian, which was half the price of the Bray and really nice)

One of the many bunkers – an exploration heaven for a boy

Fort Albert – like a lot of stuff it was not accessible

but some other stuff was

Some lovely sandy beaches

There is an annual mostly-UK fly-in (mostly UL and homebuilts, I recall) and due to shortage of accommodation many of them camp in this field

This was a good tunnel, which was claimed by some dodgy media to have been dug out for V1 rockets but it seems really unlikely and for sure nothing of the sort was ever located there at the time the Germans left in 1945. There were big labour camps and very little information on what went on has ever come out because nearly all locals left the island in 1940 so no witnesses…

On a boat trip to some rocks with vast numbers of birds nesting on them

The train runs in the summer, sporadically, for 15-20 mins, and was great fun. The carriages are from London’s underground, Northern Line, and pulled by a 1947 diesel thingy

The school

The obligatory sunset

The main harbour

The German cemetery (i.e. practically nothing)

A hospital bunker; accessible if you fancy a climb up some very rusty railings into its emergency escape tunnel

The Bray hotel, etc

Some sort of data link to France, I think

This guy looks like a pilot so he got a EuroGA leaflet in his letter box

A £16 crab sandwich – was worth every penny, just for once

I don’t think you can get inside this one (officially)

The remains of an Aztec – looks too old to have been the recently crashed one

Departing back home

Alderney cleared us to 2000ft initially. I asked for more and they said they are aware of some recent issues with this and that we will get more from Jersey, and indeed we got 5000ft as soon as we reached 2000ft and got handed to Jersey. The same route was flown in both directions; SIDs/STARs etc appear to be disregarded and they treat you like a Class G flight, “the UK way”

I am not sure if a flight plan is required but I always file one for this, especially if I was “IFR” at the destination without any question. The 12hr GAR form is required both ways and this is 100% checked nowadays; you will get a police visit when you get back if you forget. That is the only hassle; if you want to go on a shorter notice you have to fly via Cherbourg… whopps I never said that and actually that’s useless now too since LFRC now wants a previous-day PNR!!!! So probably only via LFAT or LFRG which are both quite out of the way.

Of course you would not fly to Alderney unless the wx was great.

There is only one hotel listed on booking.com (the Bray, predictably, at a price, but they do have very good ice cream ) and there was only the one apartment listed on airb&b (the one we got). There are plenty of others but – like much of France – they avoid these high-commission agencies. So you find them on google maps, or the 19th century way: the Anderney tourist office

We could never do a sizeable EuroGA fly-in there however unless people wanted to sleep on that campsite.

Only about 1900 people live on the island. It is peppered with abandoned houses. Enquiries suggest that this is mainly because people won’t accept that the prices have collapsed, and don’t want to sell their “£200k” house for say 50k. You can buy a nice 3-4 bed house for 200k, although it may need some doing-up. The tax regime is wonderful, with 20% income tax, no CGT, etc. So for someone with “own projects” who wants a laid back lifestyle, with everyone really friendly, they could buy a nice house and live like a king.

But you cannot easily get out of there and that is the big issue. For shopping you want at least Guernsey. So the economy depends totally on the airline, which is shafting everybody with £280 return tickets to Southampton, or £280 return tickets to Guernsey (via Jersey); prices from locals, not checked. The planes are Dorniers which are a poor choice. According to a very well informed insider: The Dornier can’t land on grass and has a modest crosswind limit (lower than usual – imposed by the CAA due to the narrow runway). Often it’ll be a clear blue sky but flights are cancelled due to the crosswind. The old (shagged) Trislanders just landed on the grass. They operated the Trislanders single crew. They need two crew for the Dornier. They’ve cancelled loads of flights due to co pilot sickness. A Twin Otter is fixed gear, indestructible, can land on grass, and would have been a much better choice.

There is a lot of controversy, predictably, regarding Aurigny’s accounting policies and the way they allocate costs to this route and claim it is losing money. If they stop, and nobody else can replace them, it will be like Ryanair and EJ pulling out of Spain – a near-total market collapse.

A big new hangar has been built and GA is the way to travel. Even a shagged C150 (but with a good engine, obviously!) would do the job. But of course most people are not going to do a PPL… and nobody will do a GA-based service within the cost sharing rules in the long run.

A wonderful high-value trip, very easy to fly, and lots to see for a few days.