GA ports of entry

Peter wrote:

Germany is dead easy coming from the UK (at least until 2019)
What is changing in 2019? Presumably you mean UK pilots, post Brexit, will need airports with Customs; same as Swiss or Norwegian.

Not sure exactly what the current state for UK flights to Germany is, but I am currently looking for a flight from LSZH to EDQH and I cannot do it without a stopover somewhere else before because there are no customs and no immigration at EDQH. So if flights from the UK can currently land anywhere in Germany directly, then after Brexit it will become more difficult, unfortunately.

Vladimir wrote:

So if flights from the UK can currently land anywhere in Germany directly, then after Brexit it will become more difficult, unfortunately.

No they can’t but hundreds of German airfields (down to grass strips) have immigration but no customs. The reason is that border police duties can be delegated to ordinary citizens (“Hilfspolizist”) while customs requires federal officers and the German customs have cut down on customs airports based on the declining number of customs requests — which is logical as we are surrounded by EU countries.

BTW: Switzerland also has a peculiarity: if you come from the EU + Schengen, you can land at a lot more Swiss aerodromes, such as the grass airstrip Speck LSZK. If you come from either non EU or non Schengen, you have to use a full fledged customs airport in Switzerland. Germany has another interesting simplification: if you leave the EU and your aircraft is EU-registered and you have nothing to declare, you can use any airstrip in Germany without informing customs. That’s why I will probably move back from G-reg to D-reg in the near future.

Peter wrote:

This is especially true for airspace, which is wholly in a database and has been since the early days of AutoCAD (35 years ago) but which is also published in the AIPs in a deliberately non machine readable form.

Time to update your conspiracy theory, Peter. All countries publish digital airspace data as part of Eurocontrol EAD (SDO — static data operations). The format is the international standard AIXM developed by Eurocontrol and the FAA.

jgmusic wrote:

@achimha – sadly runwaymap is not available in the UK : (

Didn’t you write that you wanted to fly to Germany?

So if flights from the UK can currently land anywhere in Germany directly

Can they?

Peter wrote:

Can they?

No, at airfields with immigration only. There are a lot of them though. Best source is usually the airfield’s web site.

Best source is usually the airfield’s web site.

… which takes us to the other intractable debate: the AIP or the airport website?

There has been a steadily increasing tendency for airports to publish stuff on their website which conflicts with what is in the AIP. That is not how the process is supposed to work. If I was running an airport I would make sure the AIP entry is right and link to it from the website.

Many of the larger airports have websites which are primarily for airline passengers and finding GA info on them is difficult.

Of course Greece has always published opening times in Notams

How long has all of Europe’s airspace data (and danger etc areas) including the Italian stuff been online?

Peter wrote:

which takes us to the other intractable debate: the AIP or the airport website?

I call them and ask them. Airports in southern Germany know about flights from Switzerland.

achimha wrote:

As Peter said, the EU + Schengen countries are so dominant in Europe that most GA traffic happens within those countries

Well….

I flew to and back from the dead centre of France yesterday and today, and on Sunday it seemed to me that there were more G-reg and N-Reg with English accents than anything else on the FIS frequency. I was beginning to wonder where the locals were on this glorious day, but I found them on 123.5 flying round their local areas.

So, on the basis of that tiny sample, it seems that we Brits make up a lot of the touring traffic.

But only in France…