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Ioannina LGIO Greece

@petakas many thanks for posting this. Agree that this is very professionally done and certainly raises interest to make a visit as a destination in its own right.

LSZK, Switzerland

Next time I go to Greece, it might be just a trip to Iaonnina as a destination

I know you know this Bosco but for the benefit of others let me re-state that with a decent port of entry airport, Greece is actually easy and offers many great GA destinations.

From an entry via LGIO (the subject of this thread) you can do all the nice little islands which haven’t been fraported e.g. Milos, Kalymnos, you name it. Most of these have such small fees you can forget it. One cannot do it in a C152 due to range but a reasonably capable tourer type can do it no problem. And Sitia provides avgas and a port of entry at the bottom end.

The availability of LGIO is a key component of the “formula”.

With a reasonable range, say a TB20 or SR22, one can fly from Croatia, say LDDU, to Kithira LGKC and back. Arguably this is Greece’s most beautiful little island.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Yes and no. What I just wanted to say is that Ioannina seems like a nice destination, and leaving it at that (as far as Greece is concerned) makes the whole trip much less complex of an exercise.

Let’s face it, more or less every additonal landing in Greece means more hassle, burocracy, planning problems etc. (not so much for me and you, but for many others). If one wants to fly to some small Island in Greece, this means one has to do at least three landings in Greece. Which brings about a big step up in terms of trip complexity. One of them is the poor opening times of the small airports (amply discussed here). The other is the lack of Avgas. The third is getting PPR for the various airports, liasing with various handling agents, etc.

Going all the way to the Agaen Sea is also quite a different story distance-wise (and therefore cost-wise and time-wise) than going just to the northwesterly mainland.

Plus, these mainland destinations may actually sometimes be more attractive than going to the islands over and over again.

So, it was just an encouragement to those pilots who fear the complexity and problems of a full-blown trip all around Greece to still consider going there at least once without it being much different (complexity-wise) than going “only” as far as Dubrovnik.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 30 Aug 14:48
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Yes; all true. What I was getting at is comparing pre v. post-fraport. We have lost some useful airports, most notably Corfu and Samos (well they are still there, at some €400, and I would be careful with the avgas which will be years old ) but Greece as a whole remains doable, with some planning.

One always needed a long range plane for Greece. The aeroclubs there, C172 and similar types, fly mostly in circles. Well, like they do in most other places really

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Few days ago I met a guy from Czech aeroclub who was ferrying C150 that they bought in Greece. He departed from Megara LGMG, cleared the border at Ioannina LGIO via Albania to Dubrovnik LDDU then Varazdin LDVA (where I met him) and to Balaton LHSM and then home. So even C150 can do more than traffic pattern only

LDZA LDVA, Croatia

I hear what Peter says about all these little Greek islands out there with “such small fees” but certainly the two I’ve been looking at – Kithira and Kastellorizo – have handlers which require Euro 50 fees or more (and that’s with an AOPA card discount), plus they need you to confirm you’re coming at least 24 hours in advance otherwise you can end up paying double…and that’s without counting the opening hours/lack of fuel etc which are also problematic, so problematic in fact that just getting to Kastellorizo from Sitia almost certainly requires another (not inexpensive) stop at Karpathos.

I agree totally with Boscomantico on this. From everything I can see, Greece ain’t easy and it certainly ain’t cheap. But as Petakas has said earlier, we’ve done this discussion to death. For me the simple truth is that I have long promised myself and my partner a trip across (at least part of) the Aegean because it will be incredibly beautiful, and life is short and so to hell with all the hassle.

This time, at least. Whether I’ll want to do it again, who knows? Perhaps I’ll become addicted!

United Kingdom

To put a €50 fee into context, it will cost the best part of €1000 in avgas to fly down to say Crete, from the UK.

Doubling the fee for arrivals without notice does indeed look exploitative (for an airport which is never likely to run out of space) and is an unnecessarily aggressive commercial attitude which would not win you any business in “northern Europe”, but the social/commercial norms in “southern Europe” are different, and they get “more different” the further south you go Fortunately, one can usually live with this because the wx down there tends to be a lot more predictable than in say the UK. And, in the UK, we have stuff like the 12hr GAR notice for the Channel Islands which has to be the pinnacle of official pointlessness, arrogance and stupidity.

My experience of many trips to Greece over 14 years is that, once you get out of the airport, the “people experience” in Greece is close to 100% nice, which I could not say for any other country I have ever been to.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Even though its been discussed again, I will remind again some of the reasons Greece has increased costs in airports.

Greece is the border of southeast EU with the “East” and a big part of it comprises of short sea crossings where anyone in distress from a sinking boat has to be saved and brought to (Greece) shore by nearby vessels.
For the last years, as most of you know, we have a flock of immigrants/refugees who come in with their “sinking vessels”, desperate to reach mainland Europe.
Even though its nowhere documented, not all of them are poor and there are families who are able to pay their way through to travel northwest for a better life in Europe.
Aviation access security has also become an issue past 9/11.
This means that passengers at small airport aprons where aircraft fly from there to International airports (where airliners then depart for other large hubs) cannot be left unattended/unescorted.
Its not about the practical part, who walks them through, its about who has the responsibility of door to door escort, guaranteeing sterile apron in the legal/liability form of the issue.
So few years ago CAA stepped up the pressure on this, even to the smallest airports (from where scheduled services connect the province with international airports).
In the past, laid back CAA personnel used to escort GA travelers to the apron even with their CAA car at no cost. In smaller airports we could just walk up the door unescorted.
Things have changed, CAA stopped doing this when (access/escort security responsibility) things got serious so who was the next available for the task ?
The handlers off course.
Has any private business provided services or been handed over liability/responsibility without extra cost ?
No.
This is the reason.
Its not about who and how escorts you from the building to the aircraft and back.
Its about the responsibility they have by their contracts and to this they put a price tag and in the meantime CAA happily do their day to day tasks with the responsibility of apron security (and safety) away from their shoulders.

All of the above is about public (CAA) airports.
The FRAPORT privatized airports case is another story of increased airport & handling charges; its a business model made for (whatever, if any) profit, irrelevant to public service infrastructure. They are private business shops.



LGMG Megara, Greece

petakas wrote:

Greece is the border of southeast EU with the “East” and a big part of it comprises of short sea crossings where anyone in distress from a sinking boat has to be saved and brought to (Greece) shore by nearby vessels.
For the last years, as most of you know, we have a flock of immigrants/refugees who come in with their “sinking vessels”, desperate to reach mainland Europe.
Even though its nowhere documented, not all of them are poor and there are families who are able to pay their way through to travel northwest for a better life in Europe.
Aviation access security has also become an issue past 9/11.
This means that passengers at small airport aprons where aircraft fly from there to International airports (where airliners then depart for other large hubs) cannot be left unattended/unescorted.

This is the part I don’t understand. What have private flights to do with refugees coming by boat (or land)! Particularly private flights arriving from the rest of the EU?

While it is conceivable that refugees are flown in by private aircraft (we did have one case in Sweden last year), surely the number of people this could involve would be completely negligible. And “9/11 access security” is a non-issue in many places.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

What have private flights to do with refugees coming by boat (or land)! Particularly private flights arriving from the rest of the EU?

Don’t think about the usual private flights on a return trip from EU.
Think about a “vehicle” that is able to transport people/goods fast by air.
This is how they see it.
What they need to (try to) guarantee is that no unlawful transport of people/goods will be able to take place.
The pressure is there from the few who may have the ability to pay serious cash for it.
Its nowhere documented but its there, usually for easier methods like sea vessels, but all authorities including coast guard are on high alert H24.
Once it happens once, totalitarian measures are taken.
Read this from 2016, you can use translation to figure out what happened.
It took place from an unattended ZZZZ field, but still the price is paid by all of us.

LGMG Megara, Greece
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