Hi all,
We are planning to depart Jersey for La Rochelle tomorrow (planned for today originally but delayed due to wx). When we checked their NOTAM we noticed:
WEF 1407140000
LA ROCHELLE CTR AND TMA HOURS OF ACTIVATION :
MON-FRI 0345-2000 EXCEPT ON 14/07 0700-2000
SAT 0600-1900
SUN 0700-2000
OUTSIDE THESE HOURS CTR AND TMA RE-CLASSIFIED TO G.
AD CONTROL NOT AVBL.
and we are not certain how to interpret this. Does it mean that the opening hours has changed to 0700-200, or that the CTR/TMA is closed tomorrow between 0700-2000? I certainly hope it’s the first one but we are not sure. We’re waiting for an response from the OPS as well.
Thanks in advance all.
//M
It doesn’t affect opening hours, just availability of ATC. Without ATC, you just land on your own. The joys of flying in France.
I read it that tomorrow the CTR & ATC will be active between 0700-2000 UTC. Outside these hours, the CTR deactivated, and the airspace reverts to class G, and there is no ATC. Ie self announce in French. (It makes no comment on the airport opening hours, just the CTR).
Are times in notams and AIP’s Local or UTC?
Notam times are UTC.
Le Touquet had (current notam doesn’t show it but maybe it is now in the AIP so it will vanish from the notam) the same deal on IIRC Tuesday, when there was nobody in the tower, so you self announce. You can still fly the ILS, with a clearance from Lille Radar.
If I can do La Rochelle tomorrow I will pop down (back Tuesday).
Edit: I think it is ambiguously worded. I can’t really see La Rochelle ATC going home on 14/07 0700-2000 because that would presumably prevent AOC operations especially IFR ones. This is a big airport…
…perhaps to do with the particular character of this particular date?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quatorze_Juillet
Is it advisable to file a flight plan for a longish trip down the western coast of France. Would there be any difference in services available?
Thanks
No (except that obviously an FPL will give you alerting service all the way from takeoff to landing).
However, in France, VFR flight plans do generally seem to get distributed to ATC and FIS units along the route, so it might just help to ease things and to get more direct routings and a more straightforward (read: concise) radio comunication.
On the other hand, even without ATC having your FPL, they will in most cases just clear you direct or as requested. The exception comes with certain military areas, where they don’t to mix civil and military traffic.
The main benefit of a VFR flightplan in France (or almost anywhere) is SAR. The secondary benefit of a flightplan is that the ATS on your route will already have all of your information so you shouldn’t need to file a simplified flightplan by R/T to enter controlled airspace.
My experience of flying VFR in France (from almost 10 years ago) is that the FP gets distributed to every ATC unit that’s relevant to the route.
That absolutely does not happen in the UK, where a VFR FP gets sent only to
so nobody along the route has a copy, not even LARS/radar units like Farnborough AFAIK.
However I have never been anywhere where the filing of a VFR FP carried any kind of enroute clearance or airport landing permission whatsoever. There simply isn’t any checking. Very rarely does anybody actually look at the route specified to see if it interests them; I recall only one instance ever where that happened and it was IIRC in Montenegro where I filed a route (off their coast) which they didn’t like. They rejected it, by sending an AFTN message back to the departure airport tower (Trieste) and since we were about to start up, they sent a vehicle down to us to advise of the issue. This is obviously extremely rare. In the UK especially you could file a FP from Shoreham to Lydd via Kathmandu.
Sadly, many products of the UK PPL training sausage machine seem to believe that a FP is a way of getting a permission to do something, and I recall some rather sad situations I heard on the radio where a pilot got turned away despite protesting that he filed a FP.
