Airports whose AIP and NOTAM data is bogus or tricky and additional briefing is required

As stated here in Annecy the same form is requested from border police even for intra-schengen flight (Germany to Annecy in this case).

Don’t know whether this is actual or outdated or whatever, but fact is that I’ve been requested to fulfil the requirements even though I pointed out that it is intra-Schengen from Germany.

Of course I cannot tell what would have happened if I landed without prior notice. But honestly, I have no need whatsoever to be the one to try that.

Can somebody point me to the AIP or Notam which says that intra Schengen and EU need to fill in that form and need PPR and or PN?

gallois wrote:

Can somebody point me to the AIP or Notam which says that intra Schengen and EU need to fill in that form and need PPR and or PN?

No, because there is no such point.

However, on the website you find this information

website

Quotation from there:

Customs regulations concerning prior-notice:
Affected flights
All flights in or out of France (both Schengen and otherwise) must submit a prior-notice form stating

The complete identity and nationality of passengers The complete identity and nationality of the crew

For all flights with handling, the Terminal will take care of the prior-notice: (website of handling agent)
Prior-notice form

modele_preavis_2019_formulaire

It is mandatory that this form be submitted with a prior-notice of 24Hrs of a flight’s arrival time to the following addresses:

(here are not less than 7 recipients!)

The absence of a reply from customs means that the request has been accepted. Any prior-notice rejection will result in a written return.

The problem here is that I would never have found that information. As always I would have ignored all information regarding customs. But still, there is nothing in the AIP or anywhere.

What makes me wonder, still, is that there is not a single PIREP around that this was in fact a problem. (actually I did not find any recent PIREP at all on typical German sites). So probability is there, that this is all void and business as usual. However, how should I know?

@gallois, I’m rather used, going to south-west France, to be met by angry douaniers, or airport personnel in remote contact with douaniers, that tell me I didn’t do douane-PNR or douane-PPR. That requirement is never in my experience clearly in the AIP or in a NOTAM (the AIP may say “douane PPR email XXXX(at)YYYY.gouv.fr” but doesn’t say intra-EU intra-Schengen flights need douane), much less by regulation. I always politely answer that they can stop me anywhere anytime even in the middle of the street in town and I have to collaborate with their check, but there is no legal basis that requires me to notify them in advance, and that AIP does not say I have to. I never got in actual trouble for that kind of situation.

I got it in writing by email from the national-central “ask the douane a question” service that indeed France is an EU member state and indeed France is part of the Schengen space and indeed France is part of the EU VAT area and indeed there is no requirement for me to notify the douane, or the police aux frontières, of any flight to France generally coming from a place that is cumulatively in the EU, in the EU VAT area, in the EU customs union and in the Schengen area, and in particular not coming from Luxembourg.

With respect to La Rochelle specifically, which in 2022 published a NOTAM requiring 48h douane PNR/PPR for intra-Schengen intra-EU flights, I got it in writing from the same national-central “ask the douane a question” service that I can fly to La Rochelle from Luxembourg and vice-versa, without any PNR/PPR, on condition that the airplane occupants carry less than 10 000 EUR cash or cash equivalents and are all FR or EU nationals. I didn’t understand the legal basis for the “FR or EU nationals” but I didn’t push that point.

Thanks, @Lionel. It’s a mess in France.

Maybe you could share that general reply you have from French Customs?

At which airports was it where thet asked you about the PN, but then let you without trouble even without having provided it?

lionel wrote:

I didn’t understand the legal basis for the “FR or EU nationals” but I didn’t push that point.

Some parts of France which are outside Europe are also outside the EU, e.g. Saint Barthélemy. Residents of those areas are perhaps not considered as “EU nationals”?

Although Schengen is nearly 40 years old now IIRC it didn’t really get properly up and running until, at the earliest the late 1990s.
From a French GA pov I remember French pilots complaining that the douaniers were still insisting that, even when leaving to a schengen country and returning it had to be through an International airport.
The pilots took this up with the FFA who contested it with the border force. The border force were forced to climb down and the FFA made a statement that flights between Schengen countries could take of and land at any airfield. (I don’t remember.whether anything was stated about Switzerland or even whether the Swiss had actually joined Schengen by then)
Admittedly, since then, some countries have suspended, derogated, diverted, from the agreement.
In France, some acts of terrorism and.covid caused a suspension. But I understood Schengen had been unsuspended some time ago. If that is the case (and I have seen no evidence that is not) on what grounds does Vinci or the regional border force have for its PPR/PN policy at Annecy, which as far as I know is still a CAP (Civile aviation publique) airfield.
So before I contact the FFA I’d like to gather all the relevant information.