Berlin EDAZ to Samedan LSZS

As I enjoy your trip reports I though I might also share one from last weekend.

I have been watching for a few weeks the weather at Samedan LSZS. Last week it finally started to snow and for Saturday bright sunshine was predicted. So Friday I passed the mandatory online test for LSZS as I had not been there in the last 12 month. Fortunately I was there in the last 24 month so no actual check flight was required.

We ordered customs the evening before, as usual they did not turn up, and left our home base EDAZ quite early in the morning. We enjoyed the bright sunshine while most of Germany looked like this:

For the route Berlin – Samedan there are two IFR routings. The shorter one is a big curve to the west going over Rhine river. The second longer one is a crazy zig zag route following the direct path. As usually I file the longer zig zag routing as this can usually be shortened in flight which is not the case for the banana style routings:

As some might know I produce these data link devices so along the way we kept updating the LSZS weather. First it looked fine but at 0820UTC the visibility deteriorated. But we figured this was dissolving fog and the next reports confirmed that it was CAVOK and stayed that way.

METAR LSZS 160650Z VRB01KT 9999 BCFG NSC M10/M10 Q1026=
METAR LSZS 160750Z 17001KT 9999 BCFG NSC M09/M09 Q1026=
METAR LSZS 160820Z 00000KT 1500 BCFG NSC M09/M09 Q1026=
METAR LSZS 160850Z 00000KT CAVOK M08/M08 Q1026=

We had some 10-15kt tail wind so after a little more then one hour we could see the mountains on the horizon. Here is a pic a little later when we overfly the first mountains.

LSZS is a VFR only airport so we had a last look on the map. No military activity on Saturday so the airspace is pretty free in that region below FL150.

With these mountains FL150 does not feel very high:

A rather unusual setting for the cabin pressure as the airport is at 5600ft

Overhead the airport at 14000ft. Now we decent and fly outbound about 10NM. There at “Maloja” we do a 180 turn and start the final approach for runway 03 at 10000ft. First I was not decending enough so we had to use the speed brakes and the gear to brake a little.

A picture on final. The runway is visible at the end of the valley. At this time of the year the lakes are not frozen yet.

Mountains on both sides. The Garmin was not happy and did complain about terrain.

On short final

Backtrack to the ramp. Because there was not much traffic we had a parking space on the main concrete ramp. In high season small aircraft (this includes everything up to approximately a CJ4) will park on snow.

That Mercedes car was a sign of potential trouble ahead. After shut down it went by the plane and asked if we need something without mentioning the potential huge handling bill involved ;-) I politely declined any services so no business for them today.

For bigger aircraft and all extra services charges at LSZS can get pretty steep so better watch out. For our 1950kg we had to pay about 115 Euro. This is not cheap but regarding the effort to maintain such an airport in a country like Switzerland and clear all the snow for a few aircraft I think it is ok. We did not refuel but the sign said AVGAS would have been about 2,50 EUR all taxed included. This was cheaper than the 3 Euro I had in my memory. All the airport employees have been extremely friendly and helpful. Obviously I can not report on the handling people.

We had a walk around the village and a nice lunch. At this time of the year the ski season is not open yet. But the next lift is about a 5 minute taxi ride away and there is a slope which allows to walk to the airport on return.

On taxi back to the runway:

The airport is quite special. It is a non controlled airport but AFIS does give taxi clearances and gives you IFR clearances.

On climbout. Last time I was there I flew a normally aspirated Beech 33 so this time a big thumps up to the turbos for pulling us out of the valley. Your need about 13000ft to really get clear of the surrounding mountains. For European ears quite strange you get told “when passing one onethousand feet please contact…”

The weather on the return trip was the same as before. If I’m not mistaken here is look at the Innsbruck Valley. Doing the IFR approach in there must have been quite exciting that day.

Shortly later a Swiss A340 passed 1000ft below us:

Now we noticed we had forgotten to call our home base as customs are 2h prior notice. So I used the datalink in order to send text messages to a friend on the ground who called up the airport and arranged everything. A big thank you there.

The rest of the return flight was uneventful. I hope you liked the report. We will be back to LSZS as this seems to be a nice winter get away for grey weekends.