Ref to this article and lawyer‘s text (all in German language):
If I understand this correctly, we are now free to land or take-off from any airfield in Germany, from/to any EU and non-EU countries… Is this a dream or reality? What did I miss or misunderstand?
Dan wrote:
If I understand this correctly, we are now free to land or take-off from any airfield in Germany, from/to any EU and non-EU countries… Is this a dream or reality? What did I miss or misunderstand?
The way I understand it, is that the act of land or take-off from any airfield in Germany = nothing to declare for customs, it’s up to you to decide that and customs can challenge it, if aircraft is D-reg with VAT paid and you are naked inside with your soul being worth zero, they can’t get anything on you, otherwise, you surely have “something to declare” 
If you have “nothing to declare”, it still useless, except for Switzerland & Norway (or if you can arrange immigration)
Yes; here.
Some people were not sure and wanted clarification from the authorities.
Not sure if this has changed.
It doesn’t affect Immigration. Only Customs. So the applicability appears limited to Norway-Germany and Switzerland-Germany. Unless you cleared Immigration via a separate mechanism, available on a PN – some stuff here.
cool guys, thanks for your quick take.
Being based in Switzerland this is (could, will…) a giant step into free access to the EU… imagine, clearing departure customs here, I can then steer any field in Germany with just a FPL requirement. Then free to fly to any other airport within Germany, or the EU with another FPL.
If this holds true, that would be fantastic news indeed.
The underlying change in the Unionszollkodex affects all of the EU. So this „change“ is not limited to Germany at all. It should affect all flights from Switzerland/Norway to any EU country.
Apart from that, there is no real abolition of customs airfield requirement. Such airfield is still required in certain cases. It‘a just that in specific cases, it may not be.
boscomantico wrote:
Apart from that, there is no real abolition of customs airfield requirement. Such airfield is still required in certain cases. It‘a just that in specific cases, it may not be.
Care to elaborate? In which cases may one
a) land at any airfield without customs attendance or PPR requirements?
b) leave from any airfield without customs in attendance or PPR requirements?
This would be really huge if implemented, particularly if this is EU wide. Somehow it sounds too good to be true.
The details are in the above link to PuF.
This seems to imply that the flight resulting in this would be perfectly legal today.
The heavy-handed legal treatment of that poor soul makes me very leery of taking this at face value. The risks are very high. I would want an English language document issued by an organization with some aviation weight (e.g. German AOPA) and not just a magazine, even if it is a email quote from a German customs official. Note the caveat in the last sentence.
It goes without saying that one waits for some other idiot to try it out.
And of course it will take some time to make its way into practice, i.e. airfield operators knowing about this and not making a fuss, etc. But time we have and it‘s a positive development towards removing some red tape for European GA.
The implementation would require Customs to set up a “flying squad” in every EU country.
Like the UK GAR system but not needing a GAR, or even maybe needing a GAR!
Obviously it isn’t going to happen.
