What is the best current alternate for Aosta LIMW?
but one which
Another possibility is a bus or train to say Aosta and a taxi from there, but my experience with Italian buses and trains is best described as a PROBxx and I will never forget this 
Probably Torino LIMF, although it is very susceptible to fog in the wintertime (like more or less all other airports in the Northern Italian plains). It has C+I, Avgas, and no major big parking issues, I think. Cost should be about roughly 400€ or so with a few days of parking, but there are extremely few reports on this airport (for who doesn’t need IFR and C*I, LIMA is a much more pleasant alternative for Turin area). Again, it will be very susceptible to fog.
The other one will be Sion LSGS. Practically no IFR capability, but cheap, and with C+I and Avgas. It is “closer” to Cervinia, but no way to get there by public transport, and a long car drive through the mountains.
In practice, someone coming from the UK will likely only depart to Aosta with an excellent forecast. And if nevertheless the weather turns out preclude a VFR landing at Aosta, he will likely land at Lausanne or so and wait it out.
Many thanks.
Yes exactly one checks the webcams before flying; this is only for the case where the place clouds over during the 3hr flight.
Torino/Turin has some GA – this is Mar 2023
but it has an ILS which is relevant even if only CAT1.
How much a taxi from Sion, I wonder? One can google it
boscomantico wrote:
The other one will be Sion LSGS. Practically no IFR capability, but cheap, and with C*I and Avgas. It is “closer” to Cervinia, but no way to get there by public transport, and a long car drive through the mountains.The ‘fastest’ way to get to Cervinia from Sion, would be by train to Zermatt and then by ropeway over the mountain to Cervinia. Maybe a taxi to Cervinia from Sion would not be that much more expensive after all.
Or just get accommodation in Zermatt instead of Cervinia, which is IMHO a lot nicer, but also way more expensive.
According to Google maps, there’s 153km between Sion and Cervinia by car, so I would expect this to cost quite a significant amount of money by taxi! Train to Zermatt and then a day or half day skipass for the whole ski area to cross over to Cervinia and ski would probably cost less but requires to take everything you need a back pack that you would be comfortable skiing with…
Sion to Cervinia is a 2hr taxi which is probably €500.
The problem with landing somewhere “to sit it out” is that you could be sitting there for a week I did that once at Wangen-Lachen… and it rained Never again!
I think the Zermatt → Cervinia ski crossing is viable only if everybody is a good skier and can carry all their stuff.
Peter wrote:
I think the Zermatt → Cervinia ski crossing is viable only if everybody is a good skier and can carry all their stuff.Thanks to the new gondola from Testa Grigia to the Klein Matterhorn, the link is now completely served by ropeways, all year round, except for some maintenance and extremely windy days. No need to ski down anymore.
I would file LIMF or LIMZ as alternates and then take rental car from there in case of landing at alternate. Any taxi transfer above €100 per direction doesn’t make much sense because €200 is a cost of 4-6 days of renting a car.
Interesting. Both seems to be OK in the “usual respects” but neither has any database reports as yet.
I would not drive; not familiar with the enforcement stuff (cameras, some signs, etc) and parking availability at the main car park at Cervinia is variable. There can be some at hotels, of course.
I Don’t know about that area, but the cost of hiring a car has gone crazy recently. You almost never get the advertised prices when you finaly click through the booking system.
We had 3 days in Meribel, Courchevel with a hire car from Chambery, it was over €360.00 and that was off season.
You can get it a little cheaper but they’ve started REALLY loading up what they’ll hit you for if you don’t take their full insurance package. It’s a scam really because if you Don’t take it (some places not everywhere) you know there will be grief when you return.
The worst one, which made me cave-in and pay, was if the car broke down, I had to pay for recovery and any faulty parts were deemed my damage until assessed and decided otherwise WTF!!
I think I’d likely book last minute accommodation in Cervinia with a high likelihood of going, and if that wasn’t going to work out, just go to Chambery and or Courchevel.
Landing in Chambery gives a vast choice of resorts all within 1hr txfer, taxi, or hire car.
