If flying is cheap in Portugal it’s not due to low utility prices, water and electricity are ridiculously expensive for example. IVA (VAT) is 23% in Portugal compared to 20% in the UK.
geekyflyer
I know portugal.
I live on the border NW Spain “Galicia” – N of Portugal. about to 90 km of oporto.
I have flown in Portugal, is 100% better than Spain.
This is a map of the aerodroms
http://roteiro.apau.org/zmapa.html
http://roteiro.apau.org/zpistas_texto.html
some workers in twr Oporto are instructors ULM in you free time.
careful driving style Portuguese and mainly women drivers with sunglasses
geekyflyer I am a Member of Porto’s Flying club based at Maia. (LPVL)
I don’t fly much there (I am based in London), but:
- Club is friendly (LPVL)
- A few people in the club are ATC (in OPO) or former ATC. I generally found ATC to accomodate requests pretty well (for instance deviating from published VFR corridors).
- That helps with ATC
- ATC will be helpful in English (Once I had a fellow (non portuguese) pilot and did all the ATC in English – you’ll be talking to the same channels as the commercial flights pretty much all the time)
- For some other stuff they seem to be less at ease (I usually fly the City and Gatwick overheads when going south, and they let me wait just over the terminal if needed, in the case of Porto I had to wait over the ocean, really far away from the actual airport, for a flight to have completely landed (even me being far away and claiming visual with the landing TAP didn’t help)
- If you fly there you’ll miss flat ground when looking for emergency diversions
- There is not a lot of other GA traffic except around lisbon.
- You file a flight plan for every flight. But it’s normally pretty simple, you’ll lose <5min if filing paper. Skydemon ETC is complete, and will file for you.
I am happy to give you the contact of one of the persons running the club by PM.
I had to wait over the ocean, really far away from the actual airport, for a flight to have completely landed (even me being far away and claiming visual with the landing TAP didn’t help)
That, however, is more the norm than the exception in most parts of southern Europe. A very inflexible appraoch to ATC handling of GA/VFR traffic.
That, however, is more the norm than the exception in most parts of southern Europe. A very inflexible appraoch to ATC handling of GA/VFR traffic.
But to be fair, they did allow me to do exactly what I had requested. I asked for low flight over all the coast with turn around on the Douro, and crossing to LPVL overhead OPO (very nice flight to do by the way). The wait was just a bit longer than at the London airports but they did allow it despite being well off the published VFR routes.
I also did flights spanning across the whole country vertically (down to Faro) and everyone was pretty accomodating.
