If it is the 15th please remember that if travelling through or over France that the 14th is the National day of celebration Aka as Bastille Day and is a public holiday.
Will French ATC be working on 14th?
I would think so for transit. I couldn’t swear to it at some small airfields and fuel may take a bit longer and many restaurants will be closed.
It.could also have the opposite effect with no French flying and filling up because they are all at village picnics with the family, And you get an easy run.
My plan now is Mali Losinj or a couple of days before Elba.
I have a maintenance issue which should be resolved on the 17th of July. Otherwise I plan to do Elba right afterward. Pity about the BS I have to go through to have maintenance done on a C210 that is 2hrs away. Never realized the value of having a good shop on the field until I moved to Europe. But hey, they are good, competent, and at this point friends so cant complain.
If the pilot of TB20 D-EDXX is a EuroGA member I have a video of their departure from LIRJ on July 5th.
Is anyone familiar with the parking surface at Elba?
It has just been realised that it may be sand, like in 2018, which is very bad. However they reserved real tarmac for “nice” planes; I saw it. The problem is that you probably need to speak Italian to sort this. The airport is extremely slow in communicating.
Everything single engine below a PA46 gets a spot on the grass, which was a little sandy mid-June, but at least no grit/stones.
Twins may stay on the tarmac, turboprops naturally, too.
(Not sure reserving a spot could help)
Not a problem for parking surface at Elba, even for a heavy certified aircraft
My last visit dates end of March, and we parked on one of the 2 rows of reinforced grass surface strips. Of course, at season’s peak those could be full…
And yes, speaking some Italian always helps in Italy
Right; this is the GA parking area in magenta
I can see you are parked close to the upper end of it, so you have only ~5m to move the plane to get the prop over tarmac so it doesn’t pick up sand.