Time to get your IR…

Frankly, what is the point of getting an IR if almost no GA fields have IAP’s and every diversion to a IAP equipped airport means expenses in the 100s of € or to be stranded hours away from your homebase.

boscomantico wrote:

These conditions also underline how much those small GA aerodomes could benefit from a basic instrument approach/couldbreak procedure. Speyer EDRY will kick its own butt for not having the IAP in place yet and losing so many movements…

That is the point: Most of the airfields to which GA has been forced to go to have no IAP in the D-A-CH Area, and at the same time, more and more airports which do outprice or outright ban small GA. Zurich has outpriced GA with ludicrous parking fees and now have applied to be exempt from CAT A IFR traffic so as not to disturb the traffic flow of airliners. This means there is no IFR airport in the whole area, the closes ones are Altenrhein and Bern. Having to drive 2 hours before you go fly takes away all the utility of flying.

Same issue in Switzerland, except for the Alpine airfields (incl. Jura), which enjoy the most clear CAVOK days of the year. (Yes, I’m jealous, I should have stayed in Valais after all… ) And somehow Basel (LFSB) also often has good conditions, whereas the rest of the lower parts of Switzerland is covered in fog.

IR remains on my bucket list, but it’s not easy (and cheap) to get it around here. All airfields in my area are VFR-only, so the next options would be Grenchen, Zurich, or Basel. This is also why I haven’t got my NFQ yet, since NVFR is more or less only possible in Basel, Bern, or Zurich. Especially Zurich is expensive and has the well-known slot requirement, also for home-based pilots and Basel costs 50 Francs extra during nighttime, since the fence to the GAC-apron is closed after SS. Grenchen only offers NVFR one day a week, and while Buochs has lightning with PCL, it’s closed for movements after SS, which makes it only usable for emergencies.

Well, obviously it depends on where you are based.

This is the wx here
EGKK 060750Z 14002KT 2000 BR BKN002 08/08 Q1030
EGKA 060750Z 01007KT 0900 FG BKN005 09/08 Q1030
EGHI 060750Z 00000KT 7000 FEW007 OVC014 10/09 Q1030
EGHH 060750Z 00000KT 4500 BR FEW004 BKN010 11/11 Q1030
EGKB 060750Z VRB02KT 0400 R21/0500 FG OVC002 08/08 Q1030
EGMD 060750Z AUTO 02003KT 2200 HZ OVC002/// 09/09 Q1030
EGJA 060750Z 09004KT 9999 -DZ BKN014 13/12 Q1029
EGJJ 060750Z 06004KT 6000 FEW003 BKN015 13/13 Q1029

EGKK is £2000+. The rest are accessible £-wise.
EGKB and EGMD would be below ILS minima, but EGMD has no obstacles so it would work just fine as a last-resort.
At all of them you could depart and that is crucial if going “somewhere serious”. No IR = grounded for a long time. And after 1 minute you will be VMC on top, 100nm vis, blue skies.

Of course the biggest plus of the IR is the enroute “ATC fait accompli” which it gives you. If VFR, they can decline a CAS clearance. In fact they don’t even need to decline; they can just not reply. That is what keeps the relative “VFR” deregulation in business. It’s politics…

Yes, Grenchen is good for day IFR, but pretty much useless during nighttime. With Emmen we would have full IFR procedures, including ILS and PAR next door in Central-Switzerland, but the field is unfortunately strictly military-only. The Antonov An-124 visits Emmen sometimes, but civil traffic is only welcome on an exceptional basis.

Germany has indeed far much better options, but the country is also 9x bigger than Switzerland and has only a very small part covered in high mountains.

Austria has a few GA airfields with interesting IAP and Departures (LOAV, LOAN). These are Y/Z fIights, and the procedures have defined points for changing to/from VFR. The points are low and close enough to the field to allow joining and exiting the IFR system (LNAV to 600‘/900‘). I wonder how much they are used. I don‘t know who developed them and managed to get them approved, or how much it cost. Maybe @snoopy has some insight. A paper exercise/survey should not have a huge cost for an RNP approach like these. The real kicker is the operational cost if a local permanent staff is required, as in Germany. This is the huge advantage in France, as mentioned by @boscomantico.

What good is an IR, when you frequently get caught into CTOT Slot Lottery?

Ah, there are workarounds

As I expressed many a time before, unless you have to fly for food (e.g. business), an IR is an expensive and mostly unattractive proposition… with the, non-exhaustive, requirements for the following:

• departure – destination – alternate IFR able
• suitable weather (minimas, ice, CBs, etc)
• an aircraft IFR able (e.g. expensive toys for pleasure, or an expensive tool for business)
• a pilot that is able (witness all these pilots having to regularly practice all kinds of approaches in good wx just to stay more or less current, witness the many accidents, witness the plethora of questions relating to basic IFR procedures asked on this very forum, even by some very experienced people…)
• increased currency requirements
• increased medical requirements

In a nutshell, the constant boasting of IR operating people is becoming somewhat tiring here, and I’m probably not the only one feeling this way…