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AVGAS and customs Europe map

Is there any map of European airfields that provide AVGAS and/or customs accessible online?

If not, would it be a good idea to develop an app for that and charge let’s say a few cents per month in order to keep it updated?

LRIA, Romania

In France you have a map of landing and parking fee, and sometimes it mentions avgas price, but both nothing related to customs.
http://aerotaxe.aenet.fr/carte-taxes-atterrissage.html#

LFMD, France

I wonder how people think this might work…

Fuel availability etc. are not published by airports in any unified, machine-readable format. Hence, it is not possible to produce such map as a mere IT exercise.
It would thus requirea lot more manual effort to do this. How can this work for “a few cents”?

Skydemon offers such maps based on user feedbacks, which is one way to do it. But that’s patchy and still not “official” info straight from the source. The whole SD package is a little over 100€ a year. Still very good value, for all the things you get.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Someone needs to periodically call and ask about availability. It shouldn’t be too expensive with a base of let’s say 1,000 GA pilots…

LRIA, Romania

I made this for Greece
GA Airports Greece – https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1jawWQkGo3-F4KyR5En95kN-H4foenzXN&usp=sharing

If a few of us chip in we could do it for Europe.

always learning
LO__, Austria

For Greece you can also see here, updated by AOPA Hellas.

LGMT (Mytilene, Lesvos, Greece), Greece

The tool is nice and powerful but not handy to use on mobile… google maps is easier/quicker I think.

always learning
LO__, Austria

This would be really handy for Italy and Sicily. Everybody is flying ULM’s on MoGas down there. AvGas is difficult to get and I’ve even considered getting barrels delivered to a small grass strip.

IAOPA had a list on line which had details as old as 2014 so can’t be relied on. For example, Comiso Airport had one tank of AvGas when they first opened and when it ran out they never refilled it, but is still on many lists showing availability. I like the PIREPS on SkyDemon but very patchy. I think this should be an ideal job for IAOPA as they are trying to promote flying.

United Kingdom

boscomantico wrote:

I wonder how people think this might work…

I agree with you Bosco. There are a lot of apps out there, often started out of curiosity about app development, with something specific in mind, and released to the public to test response.

One app with potential in this area is RunwayMap. It started with a very basic functionality which is gradually expanding with user input/wishes. It allows user input, in a way similar to eddh.de web site, and in that respect the user base plays a big role in the range, coverage, completeness, and currency of the data. That is, the larger and broader the user base and the more active the input, the better the quality of the data.

I suspect that here lies the “rub”. Another example is Avioportolano, which largely addresses the point of @Archer-181 but is limited to Italy and updates are controlled/implemented by the app owner so the principle is somewhat different from RunwayMap.

Finally, customs is a very complex subject since the word is mostly used to mean immigration/passport control and customs and the max permutations of that (i.e. 4) doesn’t even seem to hold. The European “map” in this area is fundamentally a mess with the whole free movement of people and goods gradually breaking down in practice through national populist politics (although it still seems to hold for a certain group of countries).

LSZK, Switzerland

If you do a search for e.g.

map of customs airports

you get a number of previous threads, example example example example.

However, ultimately, there is no point is having data in such a database which exists authoritatively in the AIP – because any diligent pilot is going to go to the AIP anyway. Nobody should e.g. rely on a pilot report in SD for anything remotely “legal”. So the content could, at best, be general impressions and perhaps specific info like “you can get in and out through a coded gate” which, if it changes, isn’t going to land anyone in big trouble.

However, it would be great to have a map showing airfields which have (a) customs and (b) immigration, because that data is very time consuming to extract from the AIPs. For example Germany has any airfields where there is no customs but immigration (also called “police” in the AIPs, particularly in France) can be obtained with PNR. Or some have “exit customs” meaning they have both of these but only if you are leaving the country.

The challenge is getting the participation and maintaining the momentum. Normally any such attempt would require it to be attached to a site which has plenty of natural activity, so a EuroGA-attached database would be a good start. It was discussed before and didn’t seem to be viable. Maybe now I should look at this again. EuroGA is written in Ruby which seems to be a great language for secure applications, but almost nobody knows Ruby and those that do are very expensive. But such a database could be written in PHP and there is a lot more expertise around for that.

Don’t most people plan a destination and then go to the AIP to see which airports have the required facilities?

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
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