I am shortly travelling from UK outbound over Southampton to Mimizan south of Bordeaux and would appreciate any tips, advice, etc on best routing. I have a very capable well equiped C172 with an endurance of 3h 30m so a first stop around Nantes or La Rochelle would be about right (need customs of course). So if any one would care to contribute to my current uncertainty it would be appreciated. Any suggestions on airways routing in France would be nice.
Many thanks
FF
FF – is this VFR or IFR? If VFR, but you can get ‘high’ (FL55/FL65+) I would route MP KOKOS V20 REN R14 NT. Did this a couple of years ago and it is very straightforward following these Class E ‘airways’ in France. Nantes is very affordable for GA, but handling is mandatory. You can solve this by contacting the Aeroclub who should handle you for free. Onwards to Mimizan I would take the same approach. A25 runs between Nantes and Bordeaux.
The trip is VFR although I hold an IR Restricted – the venerable IMC, and as far as I am aware does not allow me into UK class A. The aircraft is well equiped for IFR with everything necessary including Mode S. At least one of the airways you suggest appears to be a north only route or am I mistaken please?
Since you legally can, I would be tempted to depart the UK on a Y flight plan. You will probably find you then get handled as IFR by ATC all the way, which makes things very seamless. Both times I have done this, it wasn’t until we got to Nantes they wanted us to confirm VFR or IFR and we had seamless and off from ATC unit to unit all the way and no need to call for zone transits etc. You are correct that the route I suggested does seem to be against the direction of the route, but I have filed and flown it no problem. The other route to Nantes I have used is ORTAC JSY MINQI DIN A25 NTS. The disadvantage of this, while it follows the correct directions is that you can’t get high until ORTAC due to Q41.
As per the UK there is barely any traffic above 3000ft and below airliner levels.
Thanks for that Whiskey Bravo. Did you file a Y plan for the whole trip or just for sections? Again any advice / experience would be appreciated.
I just filed Y for the UK departure. You can’t do it when you are departing out of France as you can’t legally depart IFR. Technically you need to specify a transition point from IFR to VFR which should be the FIR boundary, easiest done using an airways reporting point. I can’t remember off the top of my head the exact format for doing it on a flight plan, but if you need it I can look it up. I did this on both occasions but always got handled like IFR traffic to destination. For the return if it looks like you may end up IMC then you file a Z flight plan and specify the transition point from VFR to IFR on the FIR boundary again.
Simply, based on the limited experience I have had, using the class E routes in Frances makes life simple as ATC know where you are going and that you will be out of the way of most of their other traffic. I picked up this tip from Peter’s trip reports when I was first planning some longer trips. You may get a slight overhead over a direct, but not much in most cases.
