C210_Flyer wrote:
Here is my take. If I had to go through Passport and custom control every time I used my airplane for my personal transportation to travel to another state in the US, I would never have gotten the license.
When I started it was like that and where I am based at it still is. But frankly, for us here in Switzerland it was easier before Schengen then now. As before, almost all small airfields in our neighbouring countries had airport of entry status, today a lot of them have given them up because they don’t need them for intra Schengen flights. Before, I never worried whether there was customs where I wanted to go to, most of those fields had them. Today, a lot of customs fields are PPR, some 24 hours before, some with cumbersome pre-announcements to be faxed (who the hell has still got a fax) e.t.c.
But this never dissuaded me. Doesn’t now either, but I try to go to full airports of entry when I have the choice.
C210_Flyer wrote:
But getting back to the revelation. With European distances so short if you have border controls it makes GA impractical. Yes I admit it there is very little utility with those restrictions.
The problem is if your home airfield doesn’t have customs and/or the destination doesn’t. Once you are in Schengen you are mostly ok within the EU.
Peter wrote:
Any GA plane which can fill all seats with full fuel has fuel tanks which are too small, and is a bad design, not a virtue!
To this I only agree partly. For “simple” planes, that would be the way to go, it would help a lot to stop people from constantly overloading their planes. For long range travel planes, which are (normally I hasten to say) flown by more experienced and competent pilots, putting more tanks than MTOW-MaxOW is ok, but it still will be abused.
Where I am opposed to is when tank capacities are offered which make the plane illegal in almost all configurations. That is if full fuel payload is less than even the minimum crew.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
The problem is if your home airfield doesn’t have customs and/or the destination doesn’t. Once you are in Schengen you are mostly ok within the EU.
In Hungary, on the Southeastern border of the Schengen zone, I believe three airports have permanent customs (LHBP, LHDC, LHSM). I don’t know about LHSM, but the other two will cost you a fortune to land there. You can get police and/or customs to some other designated airports (still not all small fields) for a fee on the order of 100 EUR. That is applicable each way, but fortunately not for each pax. This kills all desire to fly outside Schengen…
Btw, the situation was not the slightest bit better before the accession to Schengen.
Edit: probably the situation goes back to the times where there was a separate border control authority, which was much closer in structure to the military than to police. It was integrated into the national police around the time of our accession to the Schengen zone, but I believe still not all police officers have the authority to check passports at border crossings. This prevents the easy implementation of a scheme where the closes police officer would just turn up and check documents anywhere.
Peter wrote:
These planes can deliver a lot of bang for the buck and fulfil many peoples’ mission profiles but it is simply wrong you can fly them unrestricted, as you posted.
That wasn’t what I wrote either. I wrote with none of the bureaucracy and maintenance hassle associated with certified aircraft. But it’s also true they can be flown all over Europe (EASA land). How is described in detail here.
Peter wrote:
here on EuroGA with about 1000 readers a day we do have a responsibility to not write stuff which is going to cause somebody to spend €XX,XXX on a plane thinking they can do YYYYY with it legitimately.
What? All I’m saying is there are different ways to fly here in Europe. Of these, a microlight is altogether the least hassle. A microlight is legally not much different than a motorized bicycle or something. But regulations are local to each country, which is something any wannabe microlight pilot knows, and of course something that has to be taken into account when crossing a border. Nevertheless a microlight can legally be flown all over EASA land. A microlight is defined in the EASA regulations.
We did that MLA list here, Le Sving
And on a quick look more than 50% of the countries do require a permission (example below). And the list of stuff you have to send in would make all the “PPR” threads look trivial. Who is going to do this? Almost nobody is going to bother to fly cross-border. With a certified plane, you file a flight plan, jump in, and go…
The MLA in Europe list is last updated in November, on EMF site.
Yes; I grabbed the latest version and uploaded it to the same URL.
What I find amazing is that these CAAs are willing to spend a lot of money on people to process these requests. They seem to really want to keep the restrictions / barriers in place. Probably one factor is that they get licensing money from firms which maintain the certified types, train in them, etc. As always, money talks. But there might be other reasons e.g. reduced safety (actual or perceived – makes no difference).
Peter wrote:
And on a quick look more than 50% of the countries do require a permission (example below).
Come on! Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, France, Netherlands and Italy among several others (Portugal++) require no permit to enter. That is just about the entire European main land in Area and population. It’s mainly the Northernmost countries (UK and Scandinavia) and the Alps (Swiss and Austria) that are acting overly nitpickety (to use a EGA term 
) and require some info. Between Germany, Poland, Czech, Austria and Slovakia there is even no need for FP.
Even with this “restrictions”, swarms of microlights, from Germany in particular, are coming each summer to Scandinavia. Germans comes in all kinds of vehicles for that matter. I guess Germans simply love to travel much more than others, and filling out a couple of forms certainly won’t stop them.
It would be great to see you at one of our fly-ins, LeSving
JnsV wrote:
Btw, the situation was not the slightest bit better before the accession to Schengen.
Ok, understood. Certainly the situation within the Schengen and EU (where countries are members of both) has massively improved. For us here, who are Schengen but not EU, it has to an extent become more difficult. Before, every flight across the border was “non Schengen”, so it meant we could fly from each airfield which had customs (most did) to everywhere. Today, we can fly from most airfields to the Schengen area, but not to Non Schengen. There are some airports which have Non Schengen customs, but most of the VFR small fields do not have that.
But the real hassle is on the other side. France for instance removed a lot of customs from airfields, as did Germany. In France, that massively restricts where you can fly to directly from Switzerland, as you require customs (no immigration). In Germany, a lot of the smaller airports have customs on PPR, some practicable, others not. So for us, flying abroad has indeed become more paperwork than before.
However, we need to wait and see what the future of the Schengen area is. Right now, it does not look very encouraging. As far as I know, the renewed border controls on the road does not yet quite affect GA, but if Schengen is suspended totally, as some governments suggest, we might be in for a very rude surprise, as none of the Schengen countries are really set up to re-implement full broder controls at all airports. For the moment it appears that GA and small airports are not affected though.
But the real hassle is on the other side. France for instance removed a lot of customs from airfields, as did Germany. In France, that massively restricts where you can fly to directly from Switzerland, as you require customs (no immigration). In Germany, a lot of the smaller airports have customs on PPR, some practicable, others not. So for us, flying abroad has indeed become more paperwork than before.
Same for UK pilots, with about 50 French airports no longer accessible with a direct flight. I used to see a friend at St Yan, with an alternate of Royanne, both having customs/immigration on a PNR. Both now lost.
However I am sure a lot of this is not economic but political, with e.g. France saying to the UK “we are French, we don’t need you here”. Interestingly Wangen Lachen LSPV still shows “exit customs” so that’s sensible. Has Switzerland lost customs/imm at a lot of airfields?
none of the Schengen countries are really set up to re-implement full broder controls at all airports
They never were anyway. It was done with a travelling squad, who would sit drinking wine until they saw a flight plan which they felt like visiting and, if the wx was nice, they came to “visit”. Same in the UK; I got a “visit” in heavy rain in 2014 and prob99.99 because a passenger was Irish, not because the £1/bottle Tesco wine is any good.
