Malibuflyer wrote:
Because w/o one it‘s not an airfield but just a field ;-)
According to German legislation, yes. That’s what I feel is questionable. Other countries do just fine having unlicensed airports without operating permits. The airport list in the Swedish AIP is full of such “airfields.”
It’s the same in Norway in that respect (as in Germany by the looks of it).
We have something called “natural airfields”. It can be anything (literally) that is used for take off and landing. The restriction is max 12 movements per week. More than that, and the airport/field has to have a “concession” (not sure that translates well to English), meaning it has to be approved by the local county administration and known to the CAA. It will then be put on maps for instance, and in the AIP if it is a public airfield. Nothing else needs to be done about the field as such, other than documenting it, and it’s not a license in EASA terms, and no approval is done (other than the local county administration).
The next step is technical/operational approval. This is required for IFR and commercial operations with paying customers. Now certain technical and operational aspects has to be fulfilled and approved by the CAA in addition to the approval from the local county.
The last step is large/fully licensed airfields according to EASA, whatever that means.
My point is, this is about land use essentially. I don’t see what EASA or EU has to do with this. I would expect it’s the same in Germany, it’s a thing for the local administration.
Frans wrote:
All countries don’t allow movements on unattended airfields, except for some exceptions in Austria (limited on 4 movements per day/hour?) and Germany (for home-based pilots only, when GAFOR is at least Oscar) at some selected aerodromes.
@Frans, when you say “all countries” I assume you mean Austria and Germany, or maybe you meant to say “not all countries allow movements on attended airfields”. Many countries don’t require airfields to be attended. Even countries like Switzerland that require all airfields to have operating permits don’t require that they be permanently attended during operating hours.
chflyer wrote:
when you say “all countries” I assume you mean Austria and Germany@chflyer Correct, I forgot to add the word “mentioned” in my sentence, so I was referring to “all mentioned countries” from my post, which was Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.
IIRC Italy has mandatory firefighting presence in sone shape or form. That’s what I was told whenasking at small airfields about departing outside published operating hours.
Airborne_Again wrote:
That’s what I feel is questionable. Other countries do just fine having unlicensed airports without operating permits. The airport list in the Swedish AIP is full of such “airfields.”
How does a regular “field” (in the sense of “patch of land”) become an unlicensed (or not certified – I don’t get the difference from the Swedish AIP) airfield in Sweden?
Do I just write a letter to the Swedish CAA “my garden is now an unlicensed helipad. please publish it in the AIP” or is there any administrative process of acknowledgment involved perhaps even with a check if my garden fulfills basic requirements for helicopters to land (pls. note how carefully I avoided the word “certification”)?
Could the Swedish CAA deny to list my garden as a helipad in the AIP?
Will they send me some letter of acknowledgement that they will actually publish it?
For those people who are not that fluent in legal English, such a letter of acknowledgement could be mistaken as a form of “license” or “certification”…
Malibuflyer wrote:
Do I just write a letter to the Swedish CAA “my garden is now an unlicensed helipad. please publish it in the AIP” or is there any administrative process of acknowledgment involved perhaps even with a check if my garden fulfills basic requirements for helicopters to land (pls. note how carefully I avoided the word “certification”)?
I’ve now dug deeper into the laws and regulations than I did before, I will slightly modify what I wrote.
There is a permit concept, but it is not an operating permit, but a permit for setting up/establishing the airport – including making major changes to an existing airport. (The Swedish word is “inrätta”.) This is not required for private strips with where at most 500 movements per year is expected – there is also no requirement to report such strips.
Then there is the separate licensing concept. (The Swedish word is “godkänd” which literally means “approved”.) A licensed airport gets an operating certificate which includes conditions and which has to be renewed periodically.
What this boils down to is that while a club airport – which (except for one or two cases) is unlicensed – did need a permit when it was first taken into operation (if the law required that at the time) it does not have an operating certificate.
According to lists on the Transport Agency web site, Sweden currently has 48 licensed and 160 unlicensed airports. (Excluding heliports.)
Cool! Thank you Airborne!
How does a regular “field” (in the sense of “patch of land”) become an unlicensed … airfield?
In most non-authoritarian countries (and yes, even in the British isles) it’s simple. A field in the UK becomes an “aerodrome” when it is “… set apart or commonly used for affording facilities for the landing and departure of aircraft”. As long as nobody objects to such use that’s it. It’s no business of government or its agencies to interfere.
We are free to notify various private organisations and/or authorities, for instance to ask the local authority for safeguarding of a private aerodrome against conflicting developments or to ask for publication on charts published by NATS/CAA, Pooleys, Jeppesen etc. But none of that is obligatory in a country which still permits its citizens to mind their own business – up to a point.
Hey all,
Apologies if this was covered previously in the 13 page thread.
I just noticed in the NOTAM for EDAZ that they won’t have AFIS available until Oct 1st (and thus, IFR procedures are temporarily unavailable too). Since there is nothing mentioning that the airport is closed, does this mean that there will still be some kind of German flugleiter person available? I.e., not AFIS licensed but still responding to the radio? It just got me a bit confused.
★ C2960/21 NOTAMR
Q) EDWW/QSFAU/IV/B /A /000/999/5200N01300E005
A) EDAZ B) 2021-08-31 17:42Z C) 2021-10-01 12:00Z EST
E) AFIS NOT AVBL.
