We are currently in Montpellier, having a a weeks touring around France. We are planning to fly to Calvi tomorrow, stay there for a couple of days then on to Colmar. If conditions are right for this flight, I would like to do my first Alps Crossing. I’ve read in some other threads that there is s ‘short’ Alps route. Would someone be kind enough to point me in the right direction as my searches have drawn a blank.
Don’t know what you mean by “short route”. I mean, it totally depends on the the exact departure and arrival points. There are no universal “shortest routes”.
Just take Skydemon (or whatever you prefer), insert departure and destination, and then see how to best rubberband the route to make it work nicely, without making it too long.
Try this: LFKC, TORTU, Savona, Vercelli, Lago d’Orta, Simplon-Pass, Leuk, Reichenbach, Bern, Grenchen, Basel, LFGA. Lots of airspace to be considered in the Italian part though. You would also unfortunately have to descend to 2500 ft MSL after crossing the Ligurian Apenine, due to the Milano class A TMA bits, before climbing back up.
For the Alps part, the above routing could be done at 8500 or so and is wholly covered by GAFOR routes. Of course, if you can climb higher and the WX is good, you can do it on a more direct routing. But personally, I like flying the valleys, even if it takes a few minutes more. Just did a similar routing last week.
Thanks Bosco. I seem to recall Peter mentioned it. I think it was more west of the middle. Would like to fly at FL160 with a good margin of terrain clearance to avoid any turbulance.
I may have referred to this one (magenta line is the filed route)
which is fairly short in the north/south sense but also has an MEA of FL140 (terrain is mostly 10,000ft or so).
The relevant bit runs between DESIP and ELMUR.
However I normally try to shortcut the dogleg, as the black track shows. Track link
The other advantage of coming back to the UK from Croatia via this route is that you burn off some fuel before reaching the Alps (the bit Vicensa-Monza is very flat) which improves the options for getting above wx.
Flying a few k above the terrain I have almost never had any turbulence crossing the Alps, and I have done that many times.
@lenthamen. Yes have an IR and it will be an IFR flight. Just wanted a route with plenty of terrain clearance at FL160
OK, it was’t clear you would be flying IFR. In that case, the only useful routing is indeed M858, i.e. SRN, CANNE, TRA, On the chart, the minimum is 14000. In practice, it is usually FL150. But even FL150 doesn’t give a whole lot of terrain clearance. It’s truely spectacular. You can fly higher of course if you wish.
I’ve done the route the other way around, from Friedrichshaven to Calvi.
It was a straight airway flight via ODINA. If you plan over the airways you’ll have at least 2000ft terrain clearance.
Some things to take into consideration are the winds at altitude and the weather: I would not fly in IMC when over the Alps, as you cannot descent if you pick up ice.
We were lucky with the weather. A cold front just passed and it was crystal clear!
It seems there are two airways choices close together, either N851 or M858.
