jfw wrote:
Coming back to this saga I received a mail from a school at EBKT which forwarded a mail from the border police of EBKT which on its turn received a mail from the french police stating that you have to pass by a border airport even for intra Schengen flights
So a couple of months ago after landing at EBKT I cycled west along the canal, crossed the canal by the second bridge (unknowingly into France), crossed back again on the next bridge and was confronted by a sign ‘Welcome to Belgium’.
This only goes to show that in the opinion of the border police pilots must appear to be considered ‘dodgy’ as compared to cyclists, pedestrians, motorists, and coach drivers, etc.
@4L: it must be admitted that aeroplanes have been used to smuggle illegal persons and illegal goods, weapons and drugs and what not – only the drugs could be efficiently transported by bicycle. So they may be excused for throwing a dark eye on those dodgy little planes and their crews. And the FR-BE border area is quite sensitive in this respect, Calais is not far.
That said: if you excuse the nitpicking, where did you manage to find a canal near EBKT? Meaning the river Leie perhaps, or meaning another aerodrome?
@jfw: it would be interesting to see a copy of said e-mail communication.
Jan_Olieslagers wrote:
Meaning the river Leie perhaps
You are correct, apologies, here in this part of the world we have the river Lea which has more or less been turned into a canal, thats what threw me.
Anyway, both rivers Leie and Lea are good for cycling, last time cycling along the Lea we were stopped by border force looking for illegal imigrants who had been dumped on the M25 so maybe here its cyclists and pilots who are ‘dodgy’ ?
Dinard (LFRD) has recently changed to O/R PN24 required. This is advised by notam. This is just another nail in the coffin for pilots flying from the UK.
Dinard (LFRD) has recently changed to O/R PN24 required. This is advised by notam. This is just another nail in the coffin for pilots flying from the UK.
If Ryanair (or other international flights) still flies there, this is a direct finger-up to the UK… the Q is: why bother? If 10 years from now we end up debating why a load of French chamber of commerce funded airports are closing…
Why?
I don’t know how many CAT flights there are in Dinard in winter. But if there only few (today, they seem to have two turnarounds) then it does not make sense to have a bunch of customs or police officers sitting at the airport all day. And then, you need a PN regime.
For UK flights they don’t need Customs; they just need “police” (immigration).
However an airport which gets “big jets” does need proper security H24, otherwise somebody could sneak in at night and… so I bet you that they do actually have H24 police presence. Same goes for Caen (also 24hrs PNR) – I have just looked up the flights and there are some. It is inconceivable that these expensively built and expensively staffed places, with awfully expensive hardware parked there, would be left empty and unguarded overnight. The little Mali Losinj is H24 guarded for example; it’s obvious why.
Hence this stuff is a mystery to me.
does need proper security H24, otherwise somebody could sneak in at night and… so I bet you that they do actually have H24 police presence.
These are totally different kinds if “police” activities.
The Losinj example is a poor one. The guy checking your passport almost certainly is not responsible for airport security.
If you believe in trade union job demarcation 
