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Shoreham EGKA to Greece, via Croatia, Sep 2021

This trip was timed to reach the EuroGA Sicily fly-in but I had to drop out of it at the last minute due to a huge TS over Sicily, combined with constraints imposed on the trip by other factors.

The first leg, EGKA-LDLO, I flew with my son who has just got his PPL. It went perfectly. He did most of the radio and the avionics setting (it was on autopilot as usual). We landed, police checked the vaccination certificates, we had an excellent lunch at the El Paso, and 1hr later departed for Dubrovnik LDDU where Justine flew in via Easyjet and which was to be the staging post for Sicily 2 days later.

The Autorouter-generated FP for LDLO-LDDU had a problem; it for some reason wasn’t a VFR departure which was required. This came to light when I phoned Pula ATC asking them to delay by 45 mins (the inbound flight, and lunch, took a little longer than expected). The simplest way was to cancel it and re-file VFR, 3000ft, which resulted in a great scenic low level flight.

Then came serious problems with Greece.

The destination was Kithira LGKC and we got this. I am sure this has trapped plenty of other pilots, but nobody wrote it up on EuroGA Not possible to fly there from LDDU.

On the way back from LGKC I was going to drop Justine off on Corfu LGKR for her flight back home (taking the Fraport 3-digit hit for that). I had to drop that because of the complexity of extracting PPR from the extortionists at LGKR. Look at the detail and you will see ways of turning up on short final and being told to f- off (as Corfu has done to various people in the past, who didn’t do it quite right / didn’t get it in writing, etc). Emails to the handlers produced no reply; these people clearly don’t want any business from anybody.

So I looked at Sitia LGST and got this completely mad development

Apparently somebody in the HCAA made this up. Something was telling me this trip is not going to work… the world has filled up with useless little men who have discovered an amazing opportunity in CV19 to screw others around.

I will post pics and more stuff when I get my hands on the DSLR which I left in the plane

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

This is sickening. CV19 is the bureaucrats dream.

always learning
LO__, Austria

Circumnavigate Greece at all. It’s not worth the trouble and the risk coming with a GA flight.

EDMA, Germany

There are excellent reasons to be in Greece, but at a specific level of difficulty it is not worth doing, or not worth doing via GA.

The Fraport takeover has already established that level at most of the larger Greek airports, commencing 2016, and elevated it further with the latest spectacular PPR booking process.

CV19 has created new problems, at some airports.

Every country has a threshold, which is why I have not flown to Russia, for example.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Adding to my usual explanations about the Soviet style dictatorship of bureaucrats,inneficiency,lack of good willing,lack of motivation,now add this NEW thing called Covid prerequisites:Daily laws and regulations are produced in a fast and fuzzy mode.Some of these regs are followed by some people in some ways.Other people fight everything instead.But many have hidden behind these regulations and have paused working or pretend working,not appearing in shifts,schools,public positions, taking advantage of a Union policy or Facebook calls or health “problems” or gov tolerance . Guys,you are heroes

LGGG

Peter wrote:

Every country has a threshold, which is why I have not flown to Russia, for example.

May now be the place to go and destination of choice. Looks at tad more free than some of our closer allies….

Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

What would be a reason for not flying LDDU-LGIO, clear customs, and then fly on to LGKC? Same route back with a €100 taxi from LGIO to the ferry over to Corfu to catch the flight back to the UK.

LSZK, Switzerland

Looking at the many reports from over there over the years, I don’t think Europe is anywhere near as bad (yet).

Anyway, one has to pick one’s battles. Sitia is the place where three policemen check your passport for a flight to Karpathos (i.e. another Greek island!) and spend half an hour doing so. So their lack of a “medical station” is not surprising A pity, because Sitia used to be a wonderful breath of fresh air. My first trip to Greece went there (with much help from @petakas) and when I went to pay the landing fee (upstairs in the then brand new tower) the answer was “Landing fee??? Welcome to Greece!”

Dubrovnik was great. The charge was a lot less than expected, at some €120 (€200 or so was previously quoted). Everything is instant… well except that some bizjet crews got processed before anyone else on departure, but that is normal Nice people, very efficient. It’s a great location too; this is the sunset from the top of the hill which is reached by car, or via the cable car

Now we are on Ioanina LGIO. A lovely 1.5hr flight from Dubrovnik. The destination wx changed from CAVOK to BKN070 during the flight but it was entirely smooth through the layer which was ~4000ft thick. Justine gets scared of IMC so I was worried but it was fine. RNP Z 32, with all the RNAV waypoints inserted from the KLN94 database

LGIO had no issues with a “medical station” Passports and vaccination certificates checked. Very friendly people.

Anyway, here’s a few pics. I always print out all possible expected routes and routepacks (1-page route pic with waypoint names, and a plog for the longer ones), plus I print out all expected approach plates. Tablets shut down; in fact my son’s Ipad mini shut down on the flight down…

I am not sure which one this is; it could be Monte Rosa

What would be a reason for not flying LDDU-LGIO, clear customs, and then fly on to LGKC? Same route back with a €100 taxi from LGIO to the ferry over to Corfu to catch the flight back to the UK.

That is exactly the plan now; we will still go to LGKC, after 3 nights here at LGIO. As for Justine’s getting back home, this depends on whether you can do [Greek island] → Athens → UK on the same day, without staying overnight in Athens.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

When you finally have enough of this hassle just drop these guys an email. They’ll get everything arranged (including filing your flightplan) for <50€ per leg.

Say hi to them from me.

http://www.x-operations.com/contact.html

always learning
LO__, Austria

That is less than the Fraport slot allocation fee, so how do they do it? It could be only high level corruption at the HCAA – admittedly completely possible

Yes, of course, bizjets don’t go screwing around with 20 page PPR instructions. They just phone or email a handler. But the fee tends to be more than €50… Perhaps they add on all “expenses”. Well they must do, for e.g. LGKR where they rob you of €200-400.

Thanks for the tip

We have 3 nights at LGIO and then going to LGKC for a week or so.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
67 Posts
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