HighFly wrote:
I am wondering if you ended up making your trip to LGAV?
No, the trip was cancelled for family reasons.
HighFly wrote:
It’s too bad. I am ready to spend several 000s of euros on hotels/food/activities in Greece. But not when it is so difficult just to reach somebody.
Start considering all that (and many others) as an example of “closed-dark institutions”. Imagine what kind of responses you would receive from Interflug handlers before 1989 . 
I had a similar situation on this trip. Even in the official HCAA document most email addresses are duff, and handler addresses even more so. For emails of handlers one needs to go to their own website. For the CAA, just phone them up. For example at Karpathos nothing elicited a reply so I phoned up the one that really matters: the CAA, and the lady replied (in perfect English) “we have your flight plan, you can just fly here”.
I believe it is Goldair who never reply to emails…
Greece is all doable but you need to sometimes just use the phone (or spend a bit of time emailing lots of email addresses, the day before). It isn’t like e.g. Spain/France/Italy where English is rarely spoken among airport staff and one can get some truly comical situations, so most visiting pilots prefer to email rather than phone. In Greece, everybody relevant speaks English and nobody expects you to learn Greek.
If we do a fly-in to Greece, we use the telegram group to communicate things like contact details.
HighFly wrote:
1. Emailed the handler – two different emails (Goldair) – no response
2. Faxed the handler (Goldair) – no response
3. Called the handler (Goldair) – no-one ever picked up the phone.
What source did you use for your contacts (email, fax, phone) for GOLDAIR ?
All we can guess about the ADO (and this is a guess) is that they do not want an aircraft arriving with PPR obtained without having an assigned handler waiting for them.
In turn they (ADO) cannot go in the process of verifying you do have a handler waiting.
You or I might not do it but there have been cases in the past in other airports of pilots arriving with PPR (say from CAA) and then denying handling by having fights at the apron where they just walk up the terminal. Their answer is "but I have a PPR and landed with permission, what do you want from me, (i.e. piss off while I walk to the terminal on my own).
In the end we get down to a simple fact; handling is mandatory in such airports. The cost of them getting you a PPR (instead of you on your own) is some 40 Euro.
We all agree its a frustrating cost for such a simple service but ARE 40 extra Euro worth the hassle, are they actually worth this very forum thread ?
I ask about the emails you used for GOLDAIR because Handlers in Greece are good in Email correspondence and their English. Its unheard of that they do not reply. Only exception is remote airports with small openning times where the handlers some times answer only during operation hours when they are physically there at the airport during operation hours. In many cases I have received responses from them off airport hours, meaning some of them check emails even away from office and 99% of the cases they are efficient, polite and good in their English communication.
Petakas, Goldair never replied to anything regarding my flight to LGKP (and I didn’t use them elsewhere). They seem to be an exception (other handlers seem ok once you get a working email) but others have reported the same. Some addresses extracted from four emails I sent:
The two Goldair ones, and all the others above, all extracted from “official docs” for LGKP, never elicited any response.
Peter wrote:
extracted from “official docs”
Which do you consider official docs ?
AOPA have tried to sort this out long time ago. Specific instructions are published in www.aopa.gr/Info where for example in para. 12b they include a downloadable PDF with contacts for GOLDAIR. Off course in LGAV it lists their departments (most non GA related) since this is where their central office is but the one for us (GA) is the entry
EXECUTIVE AVIATION → ON ROTATION
For LGKP it lists aok.ops[at]goldair-handling.gr as the ON ROTATION staff for handling. The aok.sm is the station manager.
This is one: https://www.aopa.gr/images/goldair_contacts.pdf
This is another, also from aopa.gr, in which perhaps most of the emails are duff: http://www.hcaa.gr/en/our-airports
The problem is that short of employing a “slave” in India or some such, and phoning everybody regularly, this sort of doc cannot be up to date all the time.
My email server (for sending emails) has fully valid SPF and DKIM and one cannot get any better than that.
Peter wrote:
This is another, also from aopa.gr, in which perhaps most of the emails are duff: http://www.hcaa.gr/en/our-airports
Do not rely on this site for HANDLERS contacts.
Maybe the CAA emails are correct but one cannot verify it unless he tests each one of them.
AOPA recommends this site only for CAA contacts and if email does not work there then a 5 minutes phonecall at the times of airport opening hours is the simplest solution.
Hanlders are private companies and are more active in website updates.
