I booked Hotel des Trois Couronnes and will hopefully arrive from LFPT via LFMV on Friday 6th in a C182…
How strict are they with that 10 plane parking restriction? Will they allow grass parking for lighter singles? So far we have 13 signed up. Peter Im not sure what your experience has been with potential participants to actual but my guess is a fair number cancel. But being pilots we need a plan B just in case.
Just for clarification, they didn’t talk about a 10-plane parking restriction.
In their reply, they say that they don’t even guarantee or take reservations for any number of airplanes, since the apron is “free” and not “micro-managed” by them. A very good thing IMHO. What happens when they do micro-mange an apron is what we see in southern Europe, i.e. a general PPR rule is applied. Then, all places are reserved, hence no further PPR is granted despite the apron being empty.
First come first serve is the only proper way. I know it might (rarely) lead to people flying in and then finding no
parking, but that’s still better than the above. It’s also a big pain for those organising a group fly-in, but hey, something’s got to give.
Le parking de l’aviation générale est malheureusement la seule possibilité pour le stationnement de vos 10 appareils, cependant nous ne pouvons pas vous garantir un nombre de places suffisant dans la mesure ou celui est en libre accès et que nous ne pouvons pas pré-réserver de places.
Normally there is a bunch of cancellations / people not turning up. This is largely because we are not charging an organisation fee 
If we did what e.g. Cirrus do with what they call their “migrations” we would charge upwards of €200, and then almost nobody will cancel, not least because many will buy backup airline tickets. TBM meet-ups are much more; the last one was €800.
If the wx is less than CAVOK you get maybe 50%. This is understandable because some will come in VFR-only aircraft and many don’t have IRs.
But it also depends on the location; for example LDLO (Croatia) is popular with Germans and Swiss. And with different people having different routes to fly so while (generally) getting out of the UK is often a challenge, the wx might be good for a run between S. France and Spain / Southern Germany / Italy / Croatia / etc. I normally find that once I am out of the UK and about 200nm into France, things are much easier.
But then some people turn up without saying anything, which will go the other way. Plus some unrelated traffic may already be parked there!
I think Carcassonne is a case of “if you ask for an official answer you will get one, and it will be NO because that is the usual statement from an admin person”. They can park about 20 planes by the looks of it, and that’s without getting into any of their “prohibited” parking areas. I guess that had I known at the beginning that somebody in Carcassonne admin is so anti-GA I would not have gone for it and suggested somewhere nice and simple (Yugoslavia 
) but you would get the same reply from any number of airports in southern Europe. I am not getting paid for this, and I was relying on somebody with local knowledge to flag this up. Well, nobody did until way too late! In the past 2 months, 3968 French pilot sessions have been to EuroGA, reading on average 6-8 pages, so you would think that somebody would have said something… OTOH it could mean that there actually is no issue at all (apart from the apparently verified one of AIR BP card being the only payment option for avgas, which I find utterly astonishing for an “international airport” but there you go…).
As for alternates, I will file these two which appear to have a train connection to Carcassonne
and have customs/avgas. I am sure locals can advise on the connections.
Hi Peter hope to arrive friday night and have booked two rooms at Mercure.
SR 22 from Biggin and I will try to bring another pilot friend along.
boscomantico wrote:
Le parking de l’aviation générale est malheureusement la seule possibilité pour le stationnement de vos 10 appareils, cependant nous ne pouvons pas vous garantir un nombre de places suffisant dans la mesure ou celui est en libre accès et que nous ne pouvons pas pré-réserver de places.
Good thing I got google translate.
Ok parking issue solved now what about Avgas? Is there any way to determine what the price of the fuel pumped will be right then and there or do you have to wait a month for you Air BP card statement?
I am trying to get there for the Saturday night. CE510, 2 POB. WIll talk to airport to try to get on commercial apron.
There’s about a 50% chance of me planning to be there – I’m usually in Texas during that period, but if I’m not then I’ll endeavour to venture down from EGNS (Isle of Man) in the Auster J1 (most likely 1 POB).
Peter wrote:
which I find utterly astonishing for an “international airport” but there you go…
What is astonishing is that “international” airports still have AVGAS
That depends on if they have any GA traffic.
An airport makes €0.30 to €0.50 per litre gross profit on avgas. That is likely to be much more than any landing fee most people will pay. All the time you can sell the stuff, why not sell it? The marginal cost is pretty minimal once you have the legal, admin and maintenance infrastructure in place for avtur.
The larger French airports are normally very accessible to GA…
But maybe Carcassonne has almost no GA traffic? I have no idea – never been there.
