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French Strikes - impact on GA IFR

So I’m planning to fly to Sion, Switzerland IFR tomorrow (19/4/2018) from the UK routing across a large section of France. Then on Friday a day trip to Friedrichshafen and returning IFR from Sion to the UK on Saturday. The weather looks good and I flew the plane today to check everything is OK. Has anyone seen any news on French ATC strikes? Would ATC route me round Belgium, Germany, Switzerland or just cancel my flight plan? Would it be feasible to route VFR across France if ATC are on strike?

Rochester EGTO

For now, the train company, the power company and Air France are on strike.
French ATC is between two strikes

LFOU, France

A VFR flight tends to avoid the strikes, because your flight plan does not need to be validated by Eurocontrol. I have done this; last time in Sep 2017 when a large region in SE France was on strike.

ATC are unlikely to help with re-routing, but in Class E-G you can fly non-radio anyway.

If wx is nice, you can fly VFR, usually limited to FL115 or below.

It is a really good Q whether you can fly non-radio across borders. “We” are taught that one cannot but in reality it is normal to fly e.g. Shoreham to Le Touquet and change directly from one to the other, without talking to any other service in between. There was another thread on this here a while ago and nobody found any reference to the contrary (in Europe).

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

I am planning an IFR flight from S England to Malaga in Spain on Dec 30, with a fuel stop in S France, most likely Biarritz.

Does anyone have any experience on whether the current round of ATC strikes is having an impact on IFR flying.

Thank you

Sansepolcro LIQF and Bologna LIPE, Italy

Be aware, Biarritz ATC seems to be on strike regularly. See notams and SD pirep. You can look at Pau LFBP as an alternate. Tarbes LFBT is super friendly but farther.

LFOU, France

We wanted to do EDFM-LFLX on Thursday and were allocated a slot two hours after our planned departure. In the end weather was below minimums all day long in EDFM so we didn’t fly at all. We did EDFM-LFMP yesterday and we could depart as planned at around noon, no slot allocated. French ATC was excellent once again. Weather was very challenging. We had to cross a cold front and ATC was very helpful when completely changed our rout in flight.

EDFM (Mannheim), Germany

This solution is worth bearing in mind. It is a bit drastic, but ATC strikes are pretty common in France. I’ve had “something happen” there on quite a high % of flights.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

There’s another general strike tomorrow, thursday, across France.
So worth perhaps being prepared that possibly some ATC services may be affected tomorrow.

Regards, SD..

terbang wrote:

We wanted to do EDFM-LFLX on Thursday and were allocated a slot two hours after our planned departure. In the end weather was below minimums all day long in EDFM so we didn’t fly at all. We did EDFM-LFMP yesterday and we could depart as planned at around noon, no slot allocated. French ATC was excellent once again. Weather was very challenging. We had to cross a cold front and ATC was very helpful when completely changed our rout in flight.

I enjoyed your video regarding that flight, thank you for making it.

EHTE, Netherlands

I had to read this local copy a couple of times before it was obvious it is partly a spoof

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
102 Posts
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