It’s a classic, and it surprises many pilots who have not flown over water, and some of them it really scares. I know it did scare me the first time.
In 1985 I flew to England with my dad, in his Warrior. He was an experienced VFR pilot with probably more than 1000 hours then, but had never flown across water – and when we were over the Channel he got nervous in the haze and asked me “if I saw ships”. I had no licence and really did not understand, … until I had a licence years later and flew across the Aegean sea, in the same Warrior, alone. That was years before my IFR. Heading towards Crete at one point i could not distinguish the sea from the sky and it really started scaring me at one point. Only after I descended a couple of thousand feet and I could see the waves again it was okay …
My experience is that I had to send 4 eMails to Milos (LGML) airport for PPR (and in between they told me “not sure if there will be space”) and when I was there for 4 days, there was ONE other airplane there for one night …
You get this anywhere. Airport management is full of this crap.
I got it at La Rochelle, France. “We are having 30 (or some such number) business jets in tomorrow, so no parking space. You have to park on grass”. Reality was one jet. I got a photo of it, too.
And the manageress told me this “30” story face to face, not in an email. With a straight face….
Getting prior approval from airports is hard to impossible at many places. In Spain, you can basically forget it. In France, even if you phone them, the moment the person hears English they often hang up (even the main DGAC desk did that to me, repeatedly). Greece is less transparent than most and almost never replies to emails on a topic like this if you contact the airport. Handling agents (e.g. Swissport) do reply reliably, however. Milos LGML is a tiny place, with one man in the tower, and doesn’t even have a landing fee price list, so you can guess what happens when you want to pay 
But even that varies… At Sitia LGST, the great Mr Dimitris replies/replied not just to emails but also to AFTN messages! Even a German airport won’t IME ever reply to an AFTN message appearing to come from a private pilot (via the AFPEX tool, actually).
Flyer59 wrote:
@Petakas
My experience is that I had to send 4 eMails to Milos (LGML) airport for PPR (and in between they told me “not sure if there will be space”) and when I was there for 4 days, there was ONE other airplane there for one night …
@Flyer59 the LGML NOTAM says PNR, not PPR.
Just give them notice that is, don’t engage in dialogues about available space or not ;-)
@Petakas
I wasn’t me, really ;-) I sent an eMail and they replied that I would have to “send another eMail closer to the arrival” so they can see if there’s a parkings space. And then again, and again!
Good to know – next time I’ll simply send a message that I’m coming! Actually I really liked the beaches on Milos ;-)
Next stop Megara on Saturday!
In practice, the difference between PN and PPR really often does not exist; it doesn’t make much difference. You still have to ask and then receive a positive reply. Anything less, you can’t work with.
True but I use it the way its meant to be per language meaning !
For example I notify them that I’m coming bla bla (date/ETA).
In the case of Milos reply to Flyer59 I would not bother replying further or sending more emails.
If asked in the air while flying there I would say “I have notified per NOTAM instructions on bla bla date”.
The rest is up to them to do their job.
To be honest, I write the above knowing that such airports like Milos do have space enough to squeeze few GA aircraft.
They don’t even have tie down’s so there’s not much to ask for.
The exception would be if they panicked and replied me that a 15 aircraft Fly In coincides with my arrival. Then I would understand; sending again closer to the date just for PNR just in case is an unacceptable reply and to me the story ends when I notify them the first time and to make sure I would keep a hard copy of the email/fax sent.
PPR is different, you cannot get away by simply telling them “I notified you”.
It’s a little different when you’re Greek and can talk to them, like everywhere.
When I was there the guy on the tower gave me a long lecture after I told him that I don’t have a paper printout of the flight plan, becasue it was filed from my iPad.
The funniest part was that they told me that they don’t have any tie downs (30 kt wind that week), because they “rarely have small planes visiting” … after telling me about the “high season” for two weeks …
But I have mediterranean family, so I can handle it. Only sometimes the German in me loses it … ;-)
Flyer59 wrote:
But I have mediterranean family, so I can handle it. Only sometimes the German in me loses it … ;-)
Haha, keep the Mediterranean attitude when here and leave the German home, it will help.
Just don’t bother getting in discussions, focus on the mission which are the vacations, the airport process is an intermediate small process if you get the big picture, that’s what you should always think.
Paros, being in the middle of the Aegean, with a state-owned brand new airport (hence no landing fees – is has been heard that Fraport will have fairly significant such fees at its airports) would be the perfect pit-stop destination for GA traffic AND a nice place to go if you are non-airline and want to go eg to Mykonos.
All it needs are: Tie-downs, AVGAS and JETA1, a slightly longer runway for the business jet and some VFR routes. And these are easy things to do.
As a sidenote, I have another question (maybe another thread if it expands enough): Isn’t a 30kt wind considered fairly strong to park eg a C172 without tie-downs, and only chocks? If not, do you believe that if the airliner-size chocks don’t fit (eg because you have wheel pants), the small-size wooden ones are enough? I’m asking because I want to visit some other islands and don’t know.
In LGMT visitors who cannot use the handler’s chocks are usually given these big cement-filled tyres which are very heavy (I believe 50kg) and seem adequate (?) for 30kt.
That’s exactly what I had in Milos. The wind was +25 knots on landing and I know that it can be much stronger down there. But … no tie downs. Now the Cirrus is not very wind sensitive and it has a good parking brake, so i used the chocks i brought (normal airport choecke DO NOT fit under the wheel pants). Then I drove to a local fishing supply store, but a strong nylon rope of 15 meters and attached the tail of the aircraft to a nearby rock.
If there’s a real storm you can forget the cement wheels, they will not hold the airplane … just like the metal anchors (the spiraled ones). That stuff is only good for sunshine … ;-)
