Ad Hoc fly-ins

Rouen is very practical, especially when you land close to the closing hours. You might get to know that there is no one in the terminal before shutting down or even landing, making turnarounds extremely efficient.

Noted for Rouen, given it is transit it will not happen on opening/closing hours

Thanks for sharing the story Peter, it seems your guys were hanging in the nearby cafe all the time and only activated by radio call sign before the airborne notification

As you don’t go without clearing customs and paying fees, I tend to get active on these by leaving a “I am in the restaurant” post-it with my phone number, email and departure time on their closed office door (on an internal flight in the UK, the ATC guy had the guts to ask me to shut down and go back pay the landing fee as “now they are open”, I did resisted that but it is quit different from two armed mans on the wingtip or having to depart before flight plan expires)

Peter wrote:

In that case you might get a taste of this

I’ve landed 22 times to Rouen LFOP and only had good experiences. Never got any Radar lock or gun pointed at me. I have been told about the EOBT once by operations (“You know, In theory, you shouldn’t depart before EOBT”), so since then (last ~10 trips) I just file optimistic EOBTs. Complying with the 6h notice is easy, and if not within the window, a phone call has done the trick.
All of ops / customs / ATC have always been extremely ameenable, especially in exceptional situations where they all went way above they should to help.

Well, my idea of an Airbus factory tour is out on an ad-hoc basis (I mean buy individual tickets), the English tours are sold out (only one place available the whole day). Unless everyone takes a French tour , or we organise our own group (starting 10 people, which also gives more liberty of choice on what we visit and schedules), but then we need people to commit and pay their share, etc. Also starting 20 people visit, of Ailes Anciennes de Toulouse (static exposition of old planes).

These tours are Monday to Saturday; see http://www.manatour.fr/en then “Aeronautical discoveries”. The four first are Airbus tours with different focuses; the most scheduled one is the “Discovery Tour”.