Ialso found no notam r3garding closure of the field.
There doesn‘t have to be. All airfields in the British Isles are PPR and private (sort of). They have to invite you to land, they don‘t have to say you are not welcome to land. There is no „ouvert à la CAP“ concept there.
But please let us know what you found out. When I wanted to land there in the summer of 2012 I believe, they wouldn‘t let any visitor land, but that was because there had been a lot of rain in the spring and runway was very soft. Likely not the problem this year.
There doesn‘t have to be. All airfields in the British Isles are PPR and private (sort of). They have to invite you to land, they don‘t have to say you are not welcome to land. There is no „ouvert à la CAP“ concept there.
Actually in the UK the ability to issue a NOTAM hangs on whether the airfield is Licensed. Unlicensed ones can’t issue notams. Re Ireland, no idea, but most “strips” in Europe never issue notams. You need an AFTN terminal to do that…
They have to invite you to land
Not heard that before.
Therefore I will miss also the possible ad hoc fly in at Alderney next Sunday.
If flying with a dog, that’s probably the case.
From the Irish point of view, just fill this form and send it to the email address on the form. You can land anywhere you like: https://flyinginireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/IrishGARForm.pdf
Great system 
IrishGARForm_pdf local copy
eddsPeter wrote:
We are planning a short flight from Quimper (LFRQ) to EIKK (Kilkenny) next week. According to the AIP an airport of entry or airdrome with customs/immigration has to be used to get in and out. Isn‘t there any GAR procedure to go direct to the destination?
HI Peter,
The system in Ireland is a little weird.
The short answer:
You can pretty much land anywhere, but you have to do whatever the airport you are arriving at tells you to do. That is almost certainly be fill in the “Irish GAR Form” that Peter linked to above and send it off with a notice period that varies from airport to airport, but is most likely going to be 24 hours. Though they aren’t too rigid on the time.
The long answer:
Up to 1992 you had to land at a Customs airport as per the AIP (which is now way out of date!). You could land at these airports for free (including Dublin) provided your only purpose was to clear customs, and then depart. After the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the Irish Customs recognised that they were not allowed to have routine customs checks on intra EU flights. So all such routine customs checks were scrapped and we could come and go without any customs checks (on intra -EU flights). This blissful situation operated for about 2 decades and everyone was happy.
That was until someone published a flight guide, which showed that there were 163 airfields in Ireland. Prior to that Customs believed that there were 16 (as per the Pooleys guide that was the only flight guide previously available). This shocked them somewhat and they thought “We’ve a big hole here in our borders and we’ll have to do something about it!”. The solution that they came up with, recognised that they couldn’t force pilots into routine checks. But each airfield that wants to accept flights in and out of the state, must be registered with Customs under existing laws. We are also obliged (as pilots) to obtain PPR before flying into any airfield in Ireland (even on domestic flights). So Customs told the airfields that they wanted them to insist that pilots report the details of their flights and passengers to Customs and if the pilot refused that the airfield should refuse to give PPR for the field to be used. If the airfield refused to do this, then Customs would withdraw their licence to accept international flights!
Some airfields protested and ended up negotiating better terms, and some airfields were quite happy to go along. Some airfields were happy to do the reporting and others wanted the pilot to do it. So as a result, we’ve some airfields that agreed a 3 hours notice period (not sure if that one has changed or not), some 12, some 24 and some 48! The vast majority are 24 hours notice. Some airfields want you to send the GAR to customs directly. Some want you to send it to them and they will sent it on. Some want you to send it to customs and copy it to them. Some are happy either way!
So that’s why you really need to check with the airfield directly, as to what they want you to do.
So it’s routine customs checks by the back door. The head of the unit tasked with this, explained all the above to me when they first started to apply GAR forms (I made enquiries to find out what the law actually was and why there were different requirements at different fields).
No doubt it could be challenged in court (probably successfully). But actually it’s not a bad compromise. Customs get to do their checks on anything they think is risky, and because it’s not really backed up by law, they don’t get too aggravated over the time frame. My base (EIWT) uses 24 and 48 hours (depending on nationalities of those onboard) and I’ve often submitted forms with less than 12 hours notice, and nobody gets upset. I’ve even had an occasion where I called customs (as I was about to start up the aircraft to leave the UK to return to Ireland) asking them if I could change a GAR previously submitted to bring it forward a day (to the present day) and change the airfield, and I’d now be arriving 90 minutes from the current time (which was late in the evening). After a little initial surprise, it was no problem.
So all seems to work out with a bit of flexibility on all sides.
No doubt if it was successfully challenged, we’d end up with a different system that would be less flexible and strictly enforced. (I can imagine what it would need to be to get around the EU treaty obligations, but I don’t want to give them ideas on an open forum!)
Personally, I’ve NEVER been checked by Irish Customs on a GA flight. I’m told by airport managers, that they do regularly turn up to meet flights. Presumably they are risk assessing the flights.
By the way, nobody seems to care about immigration. Possibly because the vast majority of GA flights in and out of Ireland involve a stop in the UK, and we’ve common travel area with the UK avoiding the need to immigration checks.
eddsPeter wrote:
Second question: does anybody now more about the airfield of Kilkenny. It is now run by the skydiving club and there is no phone number to get into contact with them directly. The mentioned numbers in the AIP belong to the former field owner and do not help.
Sorry, I’ve tried to search for a phone number for you, but come up blank. I’ve asked around and got a number which I’ve tried to call for you, but at present it’s just going to voicemail. I’ve no idea if the field is accepting visitors or not. Given that they’ve gone to such lengths to hide their number, it’s probably not appropriate to put it here, but I’ll send it to you by PM.
The last time I was there predated the parachute club’s involvement. While the (grass) runway was smooth enough, there was a section on the western end (about a third from the end) that was quite wet. It caused me to stop accelerating just as I was coming to my lift off speed! Some flaps allowed me to lift off at a slower speed. But I always remembered that and decided I’d not go back if it had been raining recently! No doubt the drainage has improved since then.
I’ll send you the phone number (and some other comments that I received) by PM.
dp
From my general “EU” POV, theoretically the situation is more subtle. Customs can (as in “is allowed to”) definitely check each and every exit/entry into the country (let’s say around where I live they formally can check anyone anywhere anytime), but they cannot hinder intra-EU free movement of goods by making it more cumbersome (e.g. introducing delays or forcing the traffic through approved transit points) than an intra-country goods movement.
Let’s say islands (more generally countries with strong “natural borders”) have a tendency to see this differently than countries with large land (non-mountain) borders. E.g. checking everything going through the German/Polish or German/Netherlands border would take a humongous workforce (and thus budget), so these countries just accept it cannot be done, and do their checks on statistical and intelligence basis. Islands will tend to try to do it anyway, indirectly… traffic “mostly” goes through a rather small number of ports and airport anyway, so to the authorities it looks like they can do it somehow, and they try to construct a system for that.
Then, for the Irish case, if they want to check every entry/exit, it is even easier to organise, since they can require international intra-EU movements to go through specified border points anyway because they are not in the Schengen area, in order to check persons (not goods) entry/exit. So they can tack on a customs check on top of that, as long as it is not too onerous, by collaborating with the local equivalent of the Border Force.
A few checks (around where I live) customs can do on a purely national basis, without any border crossing being involved:
For this kind of check, they can literally stop you on any road or street for that.
A few checks that customs can do specifically in an intra-EU border crossing scenario:
Peter wrote:
but most “strips” in Europe never issue notams. You need an AFTN terminal to do that…
Airfields don’t actual issue NOTAMs themselves – the national NOTAM office does. If you want to have a NOTAM issued, you contact them. So you don’t need an AFTN terminal. If you issue lots of NOTAMs there are of course B2B solutions, but the actual issuing of the NOTAM is still done by the NOTAM office. One reason is that NOTAMs need to be assigned a unique serial number.
For the UK, the procedure is described in AIP-UK GEN 3.1 section 3.6.2.
For digging there is this, it mentions 3 airports (Cork, Dublin and Shanon) as being the ones with permanent customs while the rest is covered by some blanket approval although subject to PPR/GAR
Customs can (as in “is allowed to”) definitely check each and every exit/entry into the country
Well they do, even in Ireland intra-EU but only for non-EU goods 
as far as law is concerned, seems the default PN is 24h and all airports are ok to fly to,
https://www.revenue.ie/en/tax-professionals/legislation/statutory-instruments/2016/si-613-16.pdf
Those AIP entries I quoted before are c****p, not surprising, all ROI airports are ok to land on, subject to PN/PPR for immigration, if POB are CTA/EU citizens then no one should really cares (I would double check otherwise or let that dog sleeps)
Lionel,
Very interesting. Presumably then the reason that Irish Customs thought that they couldn’t continue with the system that they had previously, was that they couldn’t force traffic though specific points and without that, they’d need to require notice periods.
From your explanation, they could have set up a permanent customs post at each and every little farmers strip and check good as they come and go, but they couldn’t say “You have to give us 24 hours notice to give us time to get there.” That would create a customs delay and a barrier to free movement of goods by making it more cumbersome.
Obviously a permanently maned customs station at every farmers strip would be impracticable given that most could go months or years without an international flight.
The immigration angle is more difficult for them because of the common travel area. (Though it only applies to Irish and British citizens. It doesn’t apply to other citizens traveling between the two countries).
The NOTAMS is a bit of a misnomer. To visit any airfield in Ireland, requires PPR. So no need to issue a NOTAM to deny someone permission to use the field. It’s assumed you can’t use it, unless you get permission.
A NOTAM might be helpful, but not necessary.
Exactly what I said. And same applies to the UK.
It’s assumed you can’t use it, unless you get permission
That is also interesting concept when planning in UK, especially when looking to visit small places
A bit off topic, you call airfield say on Thursday to ask for PPR no one answers, you call on Friday they say call on Saturday, on Saturday, they say something like no one will be around today and you better come Sunday
You end up flying to Sandown, Duxford or LeTouquet, LeeOnSolent or two airfields where you have “carte blanche” to turn up unanounced by the owners…well you already fuelled for trip, pulled aircraft out of hangar and your wife had her lunch at least with “open unless stated otherwise by NOTAMS”, you can plan one day before hand…it gets interesting when you have sent PN, GAR & FPL and still no one has answer that PPR by email yet
EddsPeter has until next week, so plenty of time !
