What about Lausanne? It’s only an hours drive from Villars and Port Du Soleil.
Yes. Sounds good.
Lausanne is a good field open all winter daytime except for heavy snowfall closing it. This year practically no snow yet on the field so far.
Add 30 min to below and you have Gstaad, Verbier, Crans Montana, Argentiere (chamonix) reachable. Argentiere that means reached via Col de la Forclaz (not via Geneva) which is open all year except for exceptional circumstances. Add another hour (I.e approx 2.5h from LSGL) and you have Saas-Fee and Zermatt. This is pretty much world class skiing within reasonable distance from Lausanne in my view. And you have none of that nonsense parking crap at Sion.
If weather not CAVOK, shoot an ILS at Geneva for cloud breaking and return back to Lausanne. Pretty much standard procedure locally. Of course doesn’t work in bad weather as Lausanne is VFR and you do not want to mess around in marginal conditions with the local topography unless you know the area well.
If rather want to ski in Berner Oberland (e.g Grindelwald, Wengen, Murren), fly to Bern which has full ILS and it’s about 1-1.5h drive from field to mentioned fields.
going further to the east – Poprad Tatry in Slovakia. Skiing probably not as good as in Alps, but still….landing fee was somehow reasonable, no idea about longer parking.
You can do the whole training for Courchevel on the SR22. Christophe and Jean Baptiste are indeed the guys to contact.
The type of plane to do the training in is more a cost matter (landingfees). You should ask these (and other) questions to the two people i suggested in my earlier response, they will be able to answer them.
A follow-up on Annecy; you need PPR and mandatory handling on weekends; the PPR is via myhandling.com. The fees are steep, around 200eur, and they are due in full if you don’t cancel within 48h of your request. Also if they park you on the hard, it’s 400eur per night (+vat of course). it is possible to get parking near the aeroclub and that’s what I’ve booked, I’ll report once I’m back, although this is still quite some way off (mid feb).
Thanks.
Gosh… the website of that myhandling.com really makes the handling business look like it is nothing more than a heap of (expensive) BS…
I landed IFR in Sion on 28th Dec 2013 and left on 29th Dec. Ppr (including overnight parking request) is mandatory but in my case was granted no problem (and it was relatively high season). The ILS is VERY steep and long and you are supposed to have high speed (140-160 kts) in order to facilitate jet traffic. Expect radar vectors. Costs were very reasonable, including reasonably priced avgas. Very good service. Taxi are very expensive, so better to rent a car (I believe Europcar and Avis were available on site).
Last year I landed in Samedan: with the Perspective vertical navigation it’s easy to create your own “IFR” approach even if it’s a vfr airport (apparently that’s what jets do in Samaden if their rich customers don’t accept a diversion for IMC…). More expensive than Sion but VERY close to the ski (like Courchevel, but Samaden has customs – necessary from UK – and landing currency lasts 2 years not 6 months…).
apparently that’s what jets do in Samaden if their rich customers don’t accept a diversion for IMC…
And Trier…… doesn’t mean it is a good idea though… Diverting has nothing to do with the wealth of the passengers or crew.
