Mountain introduction in Northern Alps

Maybe you could get a mountain rating. I haven’t done it myself, but did some flying with Aero Savoie in the Alps and was very happy.

It depends. I took some books like “Alpensegelflug” (German only) and went to an airfield with my glider and started to fly in the alps. But to be honest, I would not recommend that. I did have some close calls that I maybe could have avoided. Who knows.

Even the school at my homebase that is at least an hour away from the Alps (SR22 speed) does some mountain training.

It depends on what you want to do. If you just want to cross the Alps then you could stick to the published VFR routes. This is doable without particular training.

loco wrote:

Maybe you could get a mountain rating.

That’s definitely a bit of an overkill in this situation – mountain rating is more about landing on glaciers and other interesting places, rather than flying in the mountains.

An excellent presentation by a very experienced pilot:

https://youtu.be/UBbgmqrEeRE?si=wVtK6CdUaGAAvn1Z

One thing that really struck me is that even for him, flying in the Alps 8 days out of 10 is not easy and he has to work to get through safely. This tells me flying through is not to be underestimated at all.

Mountain flying threads

I’d be amazed if one got an 80% despatch rate flying through canyons, below the level of the peaks, on random dates. You will struggle to achieve that crossing the Alps at say FL180! I’ve done it many times. FL250 is much better.

Re posting Youtube videos, this helps.

Peter wrote:

I’d be amazed if one got an 80% despatch rate

If this is referring to my post then you misunderstood. He says that of the days when the weather is good and suitable, it is still 8 / 10 times a difficult flight.

Flying in the Alps is beautiful and absolutely worth it. But it is also one of those things where you really need to know what you are doing.

In Switzerland we have compulsory Alpine Introduction flights, which is part of the PPL. Quite a few schools offer this training also “post graduate” for PPL’s up to airline pilots who wish to discover the Alps in small planes.

Mher_Tolpin wrote:

1) Do you think it’s something that worth it?

YES! If you want to fly in the Alps, a training like this is very useful indeed. And it can literally save your life. Quite a few who “learnt by themselves” are no longer with us.

Mher_Tolpin wrote:

2) Do someone have some recommendation for any school for such training? There are a lot of schools and I am not very good in chosing a good places.

There are quite a few who offer this, almost all of them near the Alps.

In Switzerland near ZRH you could contact https://www.stoffelaviation.ch/ They offer everything from simple alpine intros to full mountain ratings.
Near Munich, I know Alfred Obermaier, he is with https://www.fliegerverein.eu/ He does alpine introductions quite frequently with people from all over Europe.

There are many schools who offer this, almost every airfield near the Alps have some ATO or DTO who do this.

PM me if I can be of more help.

Mher_Tolpin wrote:

What else should I do to be comfortable with flying in Mount? Recommended Theory books?

Not much replaces actually doing it.

Flying from France to e.g. Annecy takes you over ~3000ft mountains, does this still count as “crossing the alps” and (preferably) require such training ?

He says that of the days when the weather is good and suitable, it is still 8 / 10 times a difficult flight.

Then the wx is not “good and suitable”.

I have flown in the canyons (what people call “mountain flying”) with a competent local pilot out of LSPV and while it was a great flight, even in the TB20 with its reasonable rate of climb and ~FL180 ceiling one could see how one could get into trouble.

Wx forecasting down there is even less perfect than anywhere else…