Flying across parts of France was a breeze last week, with virtually no restrictions. However, just as a reminder: going forward, please thoroughly check the list of SUPs before flying to France. Several restrictions go into force today, others a bit later in the year. Here are some of the major restrictions (and their 2024 SUP numbers):
Cannes (Monaco Grand Prix + Film Festival): 35, 103
Olympic Games: 95, 96
Various military exercises: 78, 80, 84, 85, 88, 92, 93, 100
Airshows & competitions: 62, 81, 90, 104
Le Mans: 66
UAS: 69(!), 91, 94
Tour de France: TBD
14th of July: TBD
Would I be right that
There was a time, years ago, when France was not distributing airfield notams to countries outside schengen, on the grounds that nobody can fly there anyway (legally). I vaguely recall this stopped. It did cause some funny situations where e.g. an air event at an airfield might be published as an airfield notam and not an enroute notam.
Yes. What they do is they link any given SUP restriction to both the FIR and close-by airfields, so when you brief for the concerned FIR, or the concerned airfield, a NOTAM will come up and point you to the SUP.
Examaple:
Whether any IFR routing always takes
these into account I am not 100% sure. That depends on them creating respective Flight Buffer Zones (FBZ), which sometimes takes place (see the SUP list for examples), but possibly not always. Anyway, during flight, ATC will obviously keep you clear of any active restricted area.
Peter wrote:
Would I be right that if flying VFR, a narrow route briefing should reveal these
No. These briefings only include NOTAMs, not AIP SUPs. There is no guarantee that a trigger NOTAM is done, although it happens. In practice, the flight information frequency will most probably take care of it, though.
Peter wrote:
Would I be right that if flying IFR, the Eurocontrol routing (plus ATC) should take care of it
Formally, in CAS, yes. In practice, even OCAS the flight information frequency will most probably take care of it, though.
No. These briefings only include NOTAMs, not AIP SUPs
Would a satnav app pick it up?
I ask because that is all that nearly everybody uses for VFR.
Peter wrote:
Would a satnav app pick it up?
I’m not aware that the major satnav apps integrate AIP SUPs on the map, but I might be pleasantly surprised.
I don’t think they do either, so this is a big gotcha for VFR, since for all the years I know you just needed to do the narrow route notam briefing.
That said, notams are supposed to be merged into the AIP at the next AIRAC cycle and then disappear 
So how the hell did that ever work?
As I said in another recent thread, Skydemon does quite reliably integrate those additional restricted airspaces introduced by AIP SUP into their base map. I don’t know why lionel keeps saying the contrary.
Taking that example of no. 86 (St. Die), the airspace is the smaller circle on this screenshot.
I always found that a standard NATS narrow route briefing did deliver conflicting airspaces – the French Rxxx zones etc.
So it is obviously not just interrogating notams!
How it works I have no idea. It must be interrogating some database and doing a polygon intercept, or possibly just a circle intercept which is a lot easier.
lionel wrote:
No. These briefings only include NOTAMs, not AIP SUPs. There is no guarantee that a trigger NOTAM is done, although it happens. In practice, the flight information frequency will most probably take care of it, though.
SUP AIPs always appear in NOTAMs (which you will see in departure / arrival / narrow route briefing). You only get a short summary, and need to check the PDF for the exact zone and conditions. They are not like NOTAM TRIGGER which generally happens when the AIP itself changes.
lionel wrote:
I’m not aware that the major satnav apps integrate AIP SUPs on the map, but I might be pleasantly surprised.
SDVFR integrates them completely seamlessly on the map, but you have to manually enable them (including filter by applicable date and flight levels). You just need to check once (e.g. the day before, maybe a last check on the day of the flight), enable SUP AIPs for your departure date and max flight level, and click on the zones that are near or on your route to check for restriction details.
