what you heard was the inbounds coming in all of them IFR from Croatia (some 20~25 airborne at same time) and due to the arrival flow and the arrivals & departures of the Kalamata charter airliner traffic they had to be separated by En Route ATC for arrival sequence. Even if its a light aircraft, as you know, ATC will deal with it purely on sector/airport flow limits basis.
If some of them had canceled to proceed VFR they would have been luckier but you don’t take that decision easily if you are not familiar or prepared for VFR flight at a foreign airport.
Thanks. But is was bizarre. Definitely not only Cirri being sent into the hold. Also charter and liners. Not only Kalamata, but also other northern Greek airports. I couldn’t listen much more closely to it, since I was a bit busy flying and negotiating the best possible shortcuts for myself, with a very busy frequency…
The situation wasn’t helped by the controller who was sending many of them into a hold over GARTA. The problem is that he pronounced it GARDA. A minute or two later, the crews came back saying they didn’t have that waypoint. He then had to spell it and then the crews understood. This happened many times. The question is: why didn’t the controller get it after the second time that he was being the problem?
Another interesting phenomenon was that there was a lot of confusion as to how exactly crews were requested to hold.
The normal procedure on an unpublished hold is that ATC gives unambiguous instructions regarding the hold, but most crews, a minute later to ask clarification as to which course exactly (say: 090 or 270) they were supposed to hold.
To be honest: it sounded a bit like third world. Also, despite the additional flow of Cirrus aircraft into Kalamata, I can’t think this (to this extent) would have happened in a central European country. I think Greek ATC still has a lot to learn and a lot to improve on.
Peter wrote:
If you watch the video, the Cirrus fly-in scene is more of a “lifestyle” event than a simple pilot meeting.
Hi Peter
I have to disagree with you.
Each pilot has a family, wife/partner maybe some kids and a dog. They don’t care if you have MFD or MDF fitted in you panel, they also don’t care if you fly SID or SEED or if you don’t see any STAR for a week, they want to have some fun. In order to make a fly-in more attractive to WSMBO there should be some substance and a reason for her/the family to fly from A to B. Flying is not a cheep hobby and it is being financed from the family budget hence, has a right to demand return on the investment. You always find out that the pilots talk aeroplanes, technical issues and flying while the ladies talk…well, I don’t know, I am with the pilots 
During the last 14 years or so I have organised 9-10 fly-ins to various locations in Europe, all had a program, coaches etc. Very hard work and lots of commitment have to be invested (you know about my current effort) and you never know how many people will join. However, the results are usually good as most people enjoy it. You have to remember that the person sitting to your right is probably bored to tears and the last thing she/he are interested in ‘pilot talk’.
Ben
I agree with you, Ben 
I am acutely conscious of the anorak scene in GA and the resulting need to be inclusive and that is why I have resisted proposals to do fly-ins to some place with a Zeppellin museum or a brewery I don’t own EuroGA and anybody here is free to throw in the air any proposal to go anywhere, but the ones I put some time into have to be to places which everybody (the whole family) will enjoy.
What I was getting at is that if you ask people for a couple of hundred each, you have to lay on a lot of stuff otherwise people won’t feel they got value for money.
AFAIK, the Cirrus organisers block-book hotels so there is a room discount but anybody can do that provided they are assured of achieving a reasonably high % turnout. In turn, getting a couple of hundred from everyone ensures that this happens I am told a lot of people bought backup airline tickets to Kalamata. I bought Ryanair tickets to Carcassonne, too… but I don’t think that was usual for the group, of which about 1/2 dropped out. We still had a great turnout but if somebody had block-booked a hotel they would be in for quite a liability.
Clearly many people like this level or organisation, but if we did this on EuroGA, somebody (a local language speaker, probably, especially in some countries e.g. France, Italy or Spain) would have to do some serious work on it. But then for 10k-20k euros you do have a fair bit to work with. Especially if you work on the local chamber of commerce etc.
These chaps have an offer that might suit me – if I flew a Bölkow – with precisely a visit to a brewery (what is wrong with that? and why would it not be of interest to partners – if any?) and also a visit to a military command and coordination centre. They don’t organise lodgings, only giving pointers to hotels and B&B’s nearby. But they are perhaps aiming for a more modest audience (as compared to the Cirrus event mentioned).
Peter
I don’t speak Dutch, Italian, French, Greek and my German is broken and basic, yet, I have arranged meetings in all of these countries. I usually block book hotel rooms for a certain period and get a discount of about 25%. The people that want to come contact the hotel, provide their C.C and from that minute it is their liability. At the end of the agreed period the rooms turn back to the hotel, if someone still wants to book at the last minute that person might or might not get the discount. It is not that difficult but lots of it depends on the other side replying and communicating with the organiser, if they don’t you have a problem. I have organised a trip to Holland and this took me 2 weeks to do, the average time from start to publication is about 2 months.
Being an international group also helps as every person has contacts in his/her local area, these contacts can open doors that eventually will lead to visits that are not open to the general public (in Templehof we were showed into an area that is closed to the public).
For example.
I love history and archaeology, I want to visit ’Rome’s underground (there are many remains and constructions below Rome that are not open to the public), I also like this sort of visits to museums because the doors to secluded areas will be opened. A group in many cases is treated differently especially if the group perceived as unique.
Trust me, it is not that hard. If you want to do it I will help you.
From here
Nice pictures and congratulations on another trip well done.
The issue is that these aren’t actually fly-ins. A fly in is planes parked on the ramp, barbecue, putting faces to forum names etc..
This activity however is a loosely set „tour-in“, where for 95% of the time spent there, it wouldn’t matter if you flew in alone or not. The aviation aspect of this is noticing a handful of wrapped up planes on the ramp during arrival and departure. If I’d fly to Aosta tomorrow, it would be the same experience as it were during the „Fly-in“.
I myself dropped out of the Saturday meet-up in Aosta (I believe of the ~8 who said they were going, only 1 actually did, and was stuck there on his own, but that occassionally happens!)
Imagine someone flew to Aosta to meet some eurogans in real life and then nobody shows up ;)
Personally I don’t think anything is wrong with the way it’s done Euroga style, but I think it explains the low turnout. A fly-in is something that gets its soul from many others doing something together, parking lots of planes, meeting others, plane-talk on the ramp, checking in with the Euroga counter/tent on arrival, meeting the guys“, nametags, a common activity like planes and coffee or something similar on one or two days designated for arrival. Perhaps a dinner on the evening of day two. A little prize for furthest flown/most challenging arrival or whatever. Perhaps a @dublinpilot style quiz.
Thereafter everyone goes their way/s.
Very good points by @Snoopy.
I do attend quite a few fly-ins in normal times. Most are homebuilt oriented, such as the RSA/LAA/etc, some are not.
Since I love to fly, I get high (sic) whilst getting to and returning from a fly-in. The stay is usually spent meeting old friends and making new ones, whilst sharing our passion: Chatting flying and chatting aircraft. I seldom stay more than 1 night somewhere, since I usually don’t care about some city or local attraction… at the risk of repeating myself, I love to fly
Aosta is part of my playfield, about 40 minutes away from home. I would have attended if it had been a one night event, or even better a one day event, with a gathering on the airfield itself.
Looking forward to see you guys another time, maybe…
Dan wrote:
I would have attended if it had been a one night event, or even better a one day event, with a gathering on the airfield itself.
It was freezing cold at the airport while top of the mountain was at zero or above
Dan wrote:
I seldom stay more than 1 night somewhere, since I usually don’t care about some city or local attraction… at the risk of repeating myself, I love to fly
I really really love to fly (flying since I was 16, now I’m 55) but besides meeting people, I expect the place to be scenic and to get out something more of the whole trip.
Snoopy wrote:
A fly-in is something that gets its soul from many others doing something together, parking lots of planes, meeting others, plane-talk on the ramp, checking in with the Euroga counter/tent on arrival, meeting the guys“, nametags, a common activity like planes and coffee or something similar on one or two days designated for arrival. Perhaps a dinner on the evening of day two.
For me this concept would mean flying alone. And although I do it (because I love flying ), I also like having passengers with me (my wife and/or friends) and they are not always impressed with aviation talks and hanging all day around the aircrafts or visiting Zeppelin museum next to the airfield.
At the risk of repeating myself, I like this concept of fly-ins – some scenic place with something to see in the city, some local culture and food, dinner with fellow aviators and lot of free time for other activities.
Good points made above e.g. “A fly in is planes parked on the ramp, barbecue, putting faces to forum names etc..”
However, somebody needs to organise all that. And nobody will want to. There is too much “diversity” on EuroGA. This thread started 7 years ago and this is more clear now than before.
In some contexts it can be done easily e.g.
If you go the “high organisation route”, and the above factors are nicely in place, then you can extract €225 from everybody (actually every person, if not sharing a hotel room) and in return for that you block-book a hotel, activities, a “partner programme” (for the wives; basically shopping ) and people then feel they got something. But some poor bastard has to do all this. I was in one group for 10 years where they had a univ professor doing all this. They ended up with decent size groups, but all the photos showed half the people utterly bored. I am convinced that this is the wrong way to do it; most people don’t want such an event.
And if you get cancellations due to wx (high probability if not holding an IR; look at the typical winter high pressure scenario of low cloud, layer 1000ft thick) then this poor bastard’s phone will melt down This is the other side of twisting peoples’ arms to turn up: some will fly in marginal wx.
We always have a dinner, BTW, usually on a Saturday.
However there are very clearly other “location” factors which affect participation. The list has been often posted:
The ones which tick the most boxes from the above have been Mali Losinj, Elba, and similar. Carcassonne was good too, thanks to Nestor’s great work in France. Aosta should have been good too but we had the complication of coronavirus rules, plus a lot of people practically shut down for the winter.
Another noticeable thing is that if one just proposes something, creates a telegram group for it, and lets it run, one gets 40-50 in the group, which looks great, but it soon becomes obvious that most won’t be going anywhere. If you ask the group who is coming, you get almost no response. And then most of the others drop out, seeing others aren’t coming. The way to do this is to contact “known suspects” directly by PM and ask them. I used to do this in the UK for our trips to UK or France, but most of the UK group has dropped out of flying, for various reasons… The Andorra fly-in (Oct 2021) worked out really well because someone (Aart) did that, after it became apparent that almost all the original people in the group had gone silent. And I think this is a key. It’s no good just posting an event because you get a huge number interested but almost nobody is going on the day.
What was proposed to me recently was a small “participation fee”; say €50. No actual programme organised (perhaps a local pilot can organise a restaurant; this has worked well in the past) and losing the “participation fee” would be regarded as a donation to EuroGA. I think this might work.
What clearly helps too is if a local pilot helps to drive it. I can’t do it myself.
Peter wrote:
We always have a dinner, BTW, usually on a Saturday.
We had a dinner on Saturday in Cervinia also… and it was an excellent one so tradition hasn’t been failed.
