In France it’s simple and hasn’t changed unless the bilateral arrangement with Germany has been completed.
You must file a flight plan for:-
1/ All IFR flights outside of the airfield of deparrure
2/ All VFR night flights outside of sight of the airfield of departure.
3/ When crossing international borders
4/ Flights which cross large areas of water.
Eg mainland to Corsica
5/ Is recommended when crossing inhospitable areas.
A filed flight plan is not necessary to enter CAS but you must get approval and that usually comes in the shape of a much abbreviated FPL on the radio ie registration, type, POB, where you are coming from and where you are going plus what you are asking for. Eg transit via etc.
There seems little point in my mind to waste time fighting something which most use infrequently, if at all and is so easy to comply with especially with sites like SOFIA.
Peter wrote:
National security.
Yes well, ask anyone who is involved with “national security”, and they will put the “national security” as the reason behind all and everything 
I mean “national security” trumps everything, and no further reason is needed.
Ibra wrote:
For “customs border”, you are aware that FPL alone is not enough for PNR/PPR (outside narrow case of Sweden/Norway), try Norway => Breda or Norway => Antwerp on FPL alone without sending GENDEC
That’s just a matter of how administration is done for immigration and/or customs. Besides, there’s no GENDED or anything like it between Norway or any other EU country that is also part of Schengen. There’s much more fuss flying from Norway to Denmark in fact, than from Norway to Germany or now also Netherlands (which is zero fuss of any kind, same as Sweden).
LeSving wrote:
The only thing the FP is used for that is particular for international flights, is to forward it to the customs office.
I guarantee you that the Swedish military gets all cross-border flight plans. If they see a flight approaching the Swedish border which does not agree with a flight plan, they will try other ways of identifying it – e.g. by checking in with ATC to see if it’s talking to them. If this also fails, the flight is very likely to be intercepted.
LeSving wrote:
Besides, there’s no GENDED or anything like it between Norway or any other EU country that is also part of Schengen
Again, Flight Plan is not enough to fly Oslo to Antwerp on the Belgian side you need separate PNR/PPR for C+I. The Dutch and Belgians call it GENDEC and there are two separate forms one for “C” and other for “I”, see here:
FPL is likely enough for Oslo or ENVA, however, at Antwerp you need to let Customs know about your arrival separtly from flight plan (you don’t need Police for Norway), it’s all written in airport website: I wish I could fly Oslo-Antwerp with FPL alone or even without FPL
Belgium don’t need flight plan for arrival from Norway or Switzerland according to AIP: one can land at uncontrolled airfields without letting customs know (e.g. Oslo → Ursel or Luasanne → Ursel), no one is around anyway to tell you can’t and likely no one notices or cares, however, in big international airports, you will get caught easily by walking in front of them !
It’s just a remnant from begone ages that is slowly disappearing
For VFR, that is true the world over to varying degrees. I’m amazed by the view that filing a flight plan is “trivial”, and despite it having approximately zero utility in 2024 that it’s not worth worrying about. To me as somebody who has filed only one flight plan in my flying career (during pilot training circa 2002) and will likely never file another, a requirement to do so for VFR flights would be a huge imposition that would end my further interest in flying.
In the European Schengen Zone the contrast between flying and other modes of international transport in relation to flight plans is absurd, where the cross border flight plan requirement does still exist for flying.
The two cases are very different:
It also seems much easier to coordinate different countries’ ATC if they see the same info via a flight plan (which is mostly standardized).
Can this thread be focused on When is a flight plan not required for a border crossing?
PPR/PNR/GENDEC etc are totally different topics.
Yes well, ask anyone who is involved with “national security”, and they will put the “national security” as the reason behind all and everything I mean “national security” trumps everything, and no further reason is needed.
For sure, but that is irrelevant to the topic. We are discussing legal requirements, not human nature / job protection / work creation / etc.
I guarantee you that the Swedish military gets all cross-border flight plans. If they see a flight approaching the Swedish border which does not agree with a flight plan, they will try other ways of identifying it – e.g. by checking in with ATC to see if it’s talking to them. If this also fails, the flight is very likely to be intercepted.
Exactly. The UK does that too. The police has access to a “national security AFTN message database” a version of which is prob99 maintained by every country (S&R has access too – obviously in every country!). I was shown this during a NATS visit; all AFTN messages get copied there and stay there. And checking FPs is an easy starting point for detecting potential threats, not because it is hard to file a bogus FP but because it is hard to hide from radar (well, for an amateur terrorist, at least, and most terrorists are really quite stupid). I could give an example of a similar procedure for detecting malicious EuroGA join-ups but it would be off-topic.
Peter wrote:
but because it is hard to hide from radar
Radar is used less and less, and becoming phased out. WAM and ADS-B is the future, and turning the transponder off is all that is needed (illegal, but simple). There are military radars of course, powerful and advanced ones made for detection and identification, but unless you live on an island, it’s not exactly rocket science to fly below it in a SEP Radar cannot see through granite.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I guarantee you that the Swedish military gets all cross-border flight plans. If they see a flight approaching the Swedish border which does not agree with a flight plan, they will try other ways of identifying it – e.g. by checking in with ATC to see if it’s talking to them. If this also fails, the flight is very likely to be intercepted.
More or less the same category as above. There are no Swedish military radars, or radars of any kind looking across the border into Norway. They look in the exact opposite direction, to the east. Across the border to Sweden, there’s not even possible to get radio contact with Swedish ATC before several tens of miles into Sweden, if you are high enough.
So yes, national security trumps everything, but there are things like Schengen and NATO (now also for Sweden) with clear cut lines about which borders are of importance for national security, as well as international security. Flying from Lithuania across the Baltic sea to Sweden with no flight plan and with the transponder turned off, is probably likely to kick off some action, I would think? Flying from ENMO to Molanda without a flight plan and the transponder turned off, is not likely to rise an eyebrow anywhere. The same goes for the other direction. Not because no one cares (that too of course), but mostly because no one is able to detect it. The only ones who do care (to some non zero degree at least) is customs, and the only way they are able to detect it is a filed flight plan.
Ibra wrote:
The Dutch and Belgians call it GENDEC
To my knowledge, this is only a thing if the flight originates from outside Schengen. That Antwerp PNR mentions two declarations. One for customs and one for immigration (outside Schengen), which is what this GENDEC is all about. Customs is probably a thing here, but it’s very theoretical and hypothetical when thinking GA as in a SEP flying the whole route in one go. Besides, it has nothing to do with flight plan.
Radar is used less and less, and becoming phased out. WAM and ADS-B is the future
A totally Norway-centric observation probably. European ATC has in general no ADS-B visibility, so we have the systems which correlate flight plans with radar returns.
The Dutch and Belgians call it GENDEC
Irrelevant to this topic.
This interesting piece was in the recent IAOPA Europe newsletter:
AOPA Netherlands proposed to abolish the obligation to submit a flight plan for flights to surrounding countries in certain cases. That request has been honored. The relevant regulations will be amended.
You can, of course, decide to submit a flight plan anyway. There may be good reasons for doing so. The following is described about this in the decision: Where no flight plan is required, it remains a recommendation to submit a flight plan if one wishes to use flight intelligence or alerting services to facilitate a SAR operation.
No flight plan is required for VFR flights to or from a State within the Schengen area unless: a. the relevant state has a flight plan requirement for VFR flights; b. the flight crosses the airspace of a state outside the Schengen area; or c. submission of a flight plan is required by paragraph SERA.4001, part b, subparts 1, 3, 4 and 6, of Regulation (EU) No. 923/2012.
Schengen countries are Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden, as well as the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Madeira and the Azores
