Moved to last current LFRD thread 
It is certainly a positive thing that the French airports that are on 24/47hr PN do tend to communicate in a timely manner. One exception is La Rochelle where OPS have no means of communicating with the police (who sit at the airport) and the police themselves do not communicate.
Given the fines/prison option, the confirmation of the PN is necessary.
A positive shout out for LFRD/Dinard.
Douane & Police do require 24hrs PN but Outbound from UK we had an email acknowledgement within an hour and when we needed to push departure back at short notice they were fine with just a quick phone call. Great shame that most of the facilities, including terminal, were closed, but everyone we met was very helpful. AirBP card worked a treat so refuelling was quick and easy.
Hope this falls within the thread topic -:)
Thank you for the photos – it looks almost tropical, and definitely worth a trip
It depends what you term a regional airport.
To my mind regional airports are the likes of Nantes, Bordeaux, Nice and Clermont Ferrand.
The others are just local airports/dromes as they have rarely served much more than one or 2 CAT per day.
If you look at the scheme of things the 2 hour train journey legislation will make very little difference to CAT in France.
As has already been said at places like Dinard it will have the most affect on UK GA traffic, because of the need for extended PN hours.
The problems for French regional airports started much earlier than that. There is a deal between SNCF and Air France not to operate flights on routes served by the TGV, IOW not to have competition. Typical French statist behavior. Now, with the ban on internal flights below a certain distance most of these regional airports are probably doomed, unless the military steps in and saves some for strategic purposes.
That’s amazing. It does make one wonder why they make it so difficult for people to visit, with 48hr PN for Brits on a weekend, when actually most Brits would come on a weekend…
Article about the end of Ryanair at LFRD
I’ve flown to Dinard once, for a weekend. My logbook says it was 15th May 2014. St Malo is a lovely town.
There was a Ryanair flight there, from where I don’t know. It had that effect it often has at small airports where everything goes into panic mode for an hour either side of the movement, and no GA pilot can possibly be allowed to walk anywhere, get fuel or pass through any door or gate while the commercial traffic is within 100nm.
I seem to recall it delayed us enough to be irritating upon our arrival, and thus our departure two days later was planned with the aide of the Ryanair timetable to ensure it wouldn’t be around.
The car parking was free so they would leave a car there
Another big French airport tradition I knew a guy who kept a mechanical-ECU VW Golf at a certain N French airport for years. Landed, reconnected the battery, off he went.
Good old days… you can still do this at any number of Greek airports.
Aurigny, that’s the one. There used to be a lot of Channel Isles people with 2nd or perhaps even 1st homes in Brittany. In the car park there used to be as many Jersey and Guernsey registered cars as there were French reg. The car parking was free so they would leave a car there and fly back and fore for the weekend. That has obviously stopped now as well.
