This is great news. I regularly fly to Romania and so far, using airfields in Hungary as a stop on the way, has not been very easy. Szeged fx because of passport control request is well in advance – 48 hours if I recall correct. Waiting and paying for police passport check ect. Now this change opens up smaller airfields I can use for stops comming back too. So even if the number of airfields that is available in RO/BUL is currently limited the benefit from a planning viewpoint is significant.
Earlier this year I benefit from Croatia now in Schengen – did EKRK direct to LDLO in Croatia (skipping the passport control in Denmark). Then from LDLO to LOIJ in Austria direct. Something that is now totally straight forward with both in Schengen. So once again, beeing inside Schengen is a real gamechanger in airfield options for small aircraft.
Absolutely. This, plus the thing that flights between Germany and Switzerland have become much easier (on the German side).
With very few exceptions, international flights across the very most part of the European continent have become totally easy in this regard.
Never let anybody tell you that everything is getting worse for GA. But yes, we are being pushed away from the big airports more and more.
UK flights have become a bit more restrictive in the meantime.
Being shut out of big airline airports is mostly a problem if there are no alternative GA airfields nearby with appropriate and accessible infrastructure at a reasonable price.
Yep, a good thing this air Schengen stuff.
LRAR has avgas, LROR should have it, but they have recently been working on the runway/apron area so I’m not sure the company providing fuel has finished installing (back) their equipment. It’s the same company operating on both airports and they seem to have AVGAS available at LRIA and LRBS as well.
doillq wrote:
Yep, a good thing this air Schengen stuff.
Is it applied to all air traffic, then, and not just CAT? (I’ve seen so many cases where “air traffic” means CAT and completely different rules apply to non-commercial flights.)
I flew direct Denmark → Romania earlier this week, had a chat with the two police officers that came to EKRK on departure to check my passport and they sounded like it also applied to GA aircraft from April but they weren’t entirely sure. Had a chat on the way back to two police officers that greeted me in Hungary and they also sounded like they thought it applied to GA aircraft, but also no real confirmation. Maybe others know more by now since it should be in force from tomorrow?
Airborne_Again wrote:
Is it applied to all air traffic, then, and not just CAT?
It should be applied to GA as well as far as I understand it.
Sorry for the late response, didn’t notice your input.
The thing is it seems there is no suitable secondary legislation – “application norms” in a mot-a-mot translation from Romanian – I know of at least a pilot who wanted to fly cross border but cancelled given the ambiguities.
Generally it seems no one really knows for sure. There are varying reports from yesterday ranging from a flight coming into the country and being allowed to land up to being called from ARO/briefing after filing a flight plan with take off from ZZZZ and being told one needs to leave from a certified aerodrome in order to be able to leave the country.
So far it seems it is necessary to take off from a certified aerodrome in order to leave the country, but incoming flights can land anywhere. Weird. The best reply from FIC yesterday was “Let me check with my boss” while chatting to incoming aircraft.
Will see how things evolve the next few days and report back.
So, it seems things have settled. Everybody is flying from any national airfield (including ZZZZ) to any Schengen airfield outside the country, no problems.
There is still some confusion as the local police have in some cases requested “all information about flights” from airfield administrators , even though they would not be able to provide “all information” as they do not exactly control who is landing outside work hours for example. There is a general letter from the border police to airfield administrators asking nicely for permission to enter the airfield grounds in order to make border crossing checks on occasion.
There is also an official letter from the border police to AOPA Romania stating that all flights to Schengen states are internal flights and occasional checks will be done on airfields.
So far so good!
