A mini trip report. Uk to Israel (well almost), via Bulgaria and Cyprus.

My wife and I are in the middle of a trip to Israel and are learning things that I think others might find useful, especially for those looking for alternative routes to the Eastern Mediterranean.

The ultimate destination is Tel Aviv, but as has been discussed many times getting into Israel on your own aircraft is well night impossible unless you have someone you know VERY well there to vouch for you with the Israel security services.

So we decided to do the next best thing and fly to Cyprus and take El Al from there. So will make it at least 90% of the way under our own steam. We left the UK the day before yesterday, Oct 21.

The first lesson from this trip was to avoid the normal choice of routing through Greece., with the pain of dealing with Corfu, Ioannina etc. Instead we decided to investigate possible stopovers in Eastern Europe.

First leg – departed at exactly airport opening time from EGBJ Gloucestershire UK to LDLO Mali Losinj Croatia. At 850 nm and 3.5 hours this is close to our max range in the PA46 Jetprop and a good tailwind is welcome, as we needed to be at LDLO in time to refuel and get out before the 3pm local time closing. Mali Losinj was delightful as usual. The ramshackle airport “office” was even more charming than usual, and my wife had a nice time stroking the office cat and chatting with Maya? in the bureau. We were in and out in under an hour. Prices pretty good as always – E1.65 per litre for Jet A (inc VAT) and landing fees E50 (1.97 tonnes).

Second Leg – LDLO to LBPD Plovdiv Bulgaria. Plovdiv was the stopover we chose to avoid the “Greek route” to the SE. The 2.30 leg went quickly; we were astounded by the endless mountain ranges and the novelty (for us) of flying over Serbia, Kosovo and Bulgaria. Being handed over to Banja Luka Radar (Bosnia and Herzogovina) sent shivers down my spine, last time I had heard about that city was in the dreadful 1990s war.

Plovdiv airport has a large commercial terminal, built in 2006 presumably with EU funds, but extremely quiet. They do have a few flights a week to the UK, Ireland, Germany and Austria but it was ghost town when we arrived. Refuelling and finding someone to let us into and through the terminal took about an hour. Costs at Plovdiv were Croatian levels – E46 for handling, E 30 for landing and overnight parking, and Jet A was E 1.61 all included.

There is quite some bureaucracy to conquer fin order to fly into this country. I had to apply for permission from the Bulgarian CAA, and send them copies of my Insurance and Airworthiness Certificate. Permission did at least come back quickly, by email in 10 minutes. The permission number has to be added to Item 18 of the FPL. PPR and handling is from [email protected] In addition, I have just received another email from Bulgaria demanding I send them further docs, namely proof from my POH of MTOW. They reference a certain section of the country AIP which I think refers to commercial airlines, not private GA. Thats what I told them politely.

The city of Plovdiv was a terrific place to spend an evening and morning. This was the capital of the Roman Province of Thrace and an has lots of ruins from antiquity onwards including part of the Roman hippodrome and a fantastically well preserved Roman theatre on the side of one of the hills in the old part of town. Below is the hippodrome with a 14C mosque behind.

Leaving Plovidv the following morning took about 45 minutes of trying to find the ‘handling’ people, immigration etc before we could head out across the empty apron to the plane. But they were all very nice when we did find them.

Leg 3 – LBPD to LCLK Larnaca Cyprus. We chose a flight plan route that was slightly longer than the most efficient, in order to have the Turkish coast off our left wing and enjoy all the Greek island scenery. We flew right over or past all the easternmost islands – from Lesbos all the way to Rhodes. There was one tiny island, Samothraki, that climbs right of the sea to over 5,300 ft! The flight was about 3 hours. Arriving at Larnaca was a bit of a surprise. Much bigger and busier airport than I was expecting. Aircraft were being put into the hold on arrival. USAF fighters were on frequency too. We taxied all the way to the east end of the runway to the GA apron. Thanks greatly to the suggestion of Luis on this forum we are using Airmotive for the required handling, run by the delightfully friendly Spiros. The landing fees are reasonable, but parking is ridiculous, E40 a day or so. Spiros’ handling fees are OK. Thank god I did not use the ‘big guys’ there, Skylink, I think it would have cost me over E1,000 once all their creative ways of fleecing us had been added up. Another thing to note about Spiros at Airmotive – he runs a busy GA maintenance shop too, and I understand that if I had asked for some work to be done on the plane while it is there I would have saved on the airport parking charges. Another surprise about LCLK, I had read that GA was killed off in Cyprus by the airport charges. But Spiros has a large ramp with about 20 or 30 aircraft parked there. Apparently for light GA there are much reduced yearly parking charges for permanents. We saw a couple of light aircraft taking off in the few minutes we were on the ramp.

Last comment on the trip so far. When I talked to the guys in Mali Losinj about my plan to avoid the ‘Greek Route’ to the Eastern Med they told me that they run charter flights down that way. They suggested I look into stopping in Serbia as a much better option that say Corfu. Indeed I am planning to return via Nis LYNI in Serbia on Saturday. Fuel is under E1 per litre. They also use Skopje in North Macedonia and Tivat in Montenegro, neither of which I had considered.

I will make a second post about the return trip next week. It may include an overnight in Rhodes LGPR!