It seems that here in Europe there is a general move towards every airport having relevant data on its own website.
But while these are easy to find on google, often for the bigger places the GA-relevant stuff is buried deep behind the banal stuff intended for airline passengers.
Then you get Greece which publishes airport opening times purely by notam.
The AIP is supposed to be the “most legal” source but often it is simply wrong.
There have always been 3rd party database websites e.g. ACUKWIK and this one which seem OK for a quick and dirty look, or just getting hold of airport phone numbers, but they should not be better than the airport website itself for contact details.
Is this ever likely to get sorted out?
Most countries (France, Scandinavia anyway) have easily accessible free online AIP systems, linked to by Skydemon. The fly in the ointment is Germany, where I have to pay for a Skydemon AFS add-on. Even then, I find a phone call to the destination is advisable. I know of people using airports.de but I don’t know how reliable that is. Especially if the crucial question is “is handling mandatory?”.
So to answer Peter’s question, Skydemon is close to a one stop shop for VFR. I realise that’s not the answer for everyone on this forum!
And every bit as good as SkyDemon is EasyVFR.
Indeed, I prefer Easy VFR to Skydemon.
I am too starting to use Easy VFR now, but – on this specific topic of airport info – I am not aware of any flight planning product which contains most of the information discussed here. Navbox was the leader
but died in March 2016, and wasn’t updated in these details much anyway, and when it was it was mostly from the AIPs but they contain only partial info.
I look almost exclusively at AIP and NOTAMs. I also look at the PPL/IR airport directory. I rarely call the airport unless I have doubts about the fees.
From a legal perspective, all that is needed is the AIP and NOTAMs. The info might not be current, but at least those are the official sources of info. Both are available free of charge (even for Germany). The quickest way I’ve found to get AIP info for a given airport is via autorouter, but it’s also on EasyVFR (on SkyDemon too??). The advantage of EasyVFR is that if you refresh the airfield data before departing it is available even in the air / offline.
Of course, that doesn’t help much if there is no fuel because they just ran out last week (or last year) and it was never NOTAM’d. Just to be clear, we’re talking here about airport data, not VAC charts which is really another discussion.
Peter, EasyVFR has most of the info you show from Navbox, but it is variable depending on the size/type of airfield and surrounding airspace.
Vince
The German AIP is only free of charge for airports with IFR procedures. Same for Switzerland I believe.
AIP + NOTAMs is not enough if you want to go that route, you also have to look at AIP AMDT and AIP SUP.
For the small airfields I would always look at the web page and when in doubt give them a call.
Nickmatic it seems it makes most sense to first look out where you want to go and then find an airport with customs in the vicinity. As was mentioned already many even smaller fields have customs.
Only public airports have any information in the AIP. That is the definition of “public” as far as I know regarding airports. If it’s not public, then it has some prior permission requirements. I have given up on both EVR and SD regarding any consistent, updated and correct information of non public airports. Even the public ones are sketchy. For public airports I go to the AIP, for the others I use the web (google).
