I think there’s a significant risk that passport stamping will be made compulsory at the small airfields in NL
That would only shut down extra-schengen access even more than at present, and airfields on the mainland losing yet more business. There are already issues like this. France is already largely closed to such traffic, with predictable results.
I don’t think anybody wanted to embark on this exercise 
Anyway, this is thankfully not related to flight plans at all…
I am less worried about passports & stamps, I can always show the right one (and worst case for my pax: rubber boat as you say should work just fine)
It’s getting aircraft confiscated or paying 25% on it’s market value that keeps me awake at night
Ibra wrote:
Good to see that you can still fly UK-Texel (AIP says, immigration: NO, customs: AD hours)
So long as it lasts. What I didn’t mention was that when I got to Norway, Norwegian customs were very interested in how I had got into Schengen without passing through passport control. I think there’s a significant risk that passport stamping will be made compulsory at the small airfields in NL.In the case of Texel that means a 2Hr boat trip from the mainland, during which you have to hang out in the control tower waiting for them. I doubt Dutch customs are going to set up a permanent presence when the alternative is just to route the traffic to big expensive airports instead.
At least I’ve got a rubber boat in the plane, so getting back to UK via Dover shouldn’t be a problem.
GrahamG wrote:
As usual Texel were a great example of how an airfield should be run
Good to see that you can still fly UK-Texel (AIP says, immigration: NO, customs: AD hours)
I am looking to join the August Texel fly-in from North Weald
Code is EGSX, so less fuss with Dutch ARO/AIS
SD use EuroFPL to file flight plans.
Used SkyDemon to file a VFR flightplan from ZZZZ Baxterley to EHTX/Texel last Friday 17/6 and had no problems. AMS info and Texel had our details.
Was not able to use the ‘compulsory’ gendec.eu site for Dutch GAR as it will not accept just ‘ZZZZ’ and they need to manually add the ‘ZZZZ Baxterley’ airfield name but has not been done 4 days later. Used the SD option and worked fine.
As usual Texel were a great example of how an airfield should be run
The main point is that there is no database that these VFR FPs go into. Each country runs its own one, and with different rules for distribution, ranging from good in France to poor/nonexistent in the UK. Described here.
So basically your VFR FP ends up on a “nail in the wall” at each addressed location, and it is somebody’s job to check that nail for the day’s FPs. That is literally how it is at airfields which don’t have a “computer terminal” with access to the database. How do they get the FP to start with? By fax! Nowadays by email; they print out the email and put the bit of paper on the nail in the wall.
The system is great for job protection / job demarcation.
AFAIK, they did exchange the TTX communication with more modern equipment, but still use the old telex syntax = at least you can send a SMS2FAX with the FPL string in Telex style directly into the system.
AFAIK the handling of VFR flight plans has not changed in decades, apart from the original AFTN (a telex network) having been replaced with high speed links.
So they are susceptible to disappearing for the same reasons which always existed.
Maybe someone working in ATC can post whether anything has changed in their user interface?
I think the Dutch are far to worried about VFR from ZZZZ in NL and VFR to ZZZZ in UK, reading the whole AIP ENR1.10, 1.1.2.3.2 seems to sing a whole song around that, obviously, there have been cases of drugs, smuggling…on NL/UK VFR flights, especially with people flying to ZZZZ in UK, maybe this what drives that AIP change to have a human operator to “work on it” or “file it” with their proprietary systems than the AFTN? but then they decided to make whole dog breakfast out of that !
PS: I doubt the guys who were caught in UK from NL “full of charlie” had a single clue how SkyDemon flight plans are filed or processed
