Customs Leaving France

[novoport]

Is there a requirement to notify French customs when leaving France for the UK? I am planning a flight to LFJR (Angers) which does not have permanent customs, so will go into France via LFRC (Cherbourg), since they do have a permanent customs presence. However, on the way back, do I also need to route via LFRC, or can I just go direct to the UK (having filed the GAR form of course)?

The question is about the requirement on the French side at departure, rather than arrival in the UK.

[hoodie]

You must leave France from a Customs airfield, during Customs hours if appropriate. They can get all Gallic if you don't.

[IO540]

I agree one should depart via a Customs airfield and this is true with most countries (in the general European case, a departure to another Schengen airfield does not need Customs, except with Greece which signed Schengen and disregards it) but

They can get all Gallic if you don't.

has the above ever actually happened?

Pretty obviously one could just file for say LTQ and divert "due weather" or any other reason within the Captain's authority, to say Lydd.

The bottom line is that most countries don't actually care what you do when departing there. The known exceptions are ones like Egypt and Turkey which are trying to stop outbound artefact smuggling.

[FerrypilotDK]

...really? Aren´t they the ones touting this Union in all other matters? Does that mean that I made a BIG mistake, leaving Spain recently from a flying club aerodrome for Guernsey????

....or a grass strip for Sweden from Denmark....?

or....

I shudder to think....

really?

what is the Spanish equivalent of going gallic, I wonder?

[patowalker]

1.2.1 REGULATION CONCERNING CIVIL AIRCRAFT WHICH CARRY OUT
INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS
GENERAL
Any overflight of the French territory with or without stop, should be performed in compliance with the Civil Aviation regulations applicable to this territory.
All aircraft arriving from abroad and entering the French territory should perform the first landing on an airport provided with Customs, Police and
Sanitary controls. Also, all aircraft leaving the French territory abroad should have their last stop in the French territory on such type of airport.


It does not need to be an airfield with a permanent Customs presence, you just need to comply with the PNR.

[IO540]

Customs airfields tend to be

1) Customs PNR

2) Customs present during all opening hours

3) H24 airport; usually means H24 Customs too

Getting out of Customs airfields to a non-EU or non-Schengen destination is a very old game.....

[patowalker]

Does that mean that I made a BIG mistake, leaving Spain recently from a flying club aerodrome for Guernsey????

Si señor!

what is the Spanish equivalent of going gallic, I wonder?

An Inquisition. :)

[hoodie]

has the above ever actually happened?

Well, I don't know from personal experience.

However, there have been a few reported occurances here/on Flyer where people say that they/people they know have been tracked down by the French authorities and nasty and expensive things have happened.

Of course, that's all anecdotal.

But the OP's question was:

about the requirement on the French side at departure

The requirement is undeniably that you must leave from a Customs port.

It's up to him whether or not he fancies being in a position to potentially say "..but a bloke on the Internet said this wouldn't happen".

[IO540]

However, there have been a few reported occurances here/on Flyer where people say that they/people they know have been tracked down by the French authorities and nasty and expensive things have happened.

Of course, that's all anecdotal.


I'd like to hear of anybody who filed and flew from a non Customs French (or any other) airport, for the UK, and got pursued for it after landing in the UK.

The stuff I have read was 3rd or 4th hand reports of people getting picked up for doing this upon their return to France some months later. This kind of makes sense because if you keep doing something which breaks some rule over and over, eventually somebody will notice. But I have no greater belief in those stories than in any other that circulates in UK GA :)

If I was doing this, I would file and fly to another Schengen airport, preferably in another country, and from there divert to the UK. And I would file the UK airport as my alternate, so it is above board. A diversion is within the Captain's discretion for any number of reasons.

[Jodelman]

Last year at Abbeville, a guy had just filed a flight plan for the UK when he was approached by the Police and asked why he had done that without giving the required 4 hours notice. When I left he was digging out all his paperwork for them.

[patowalker]

A diversion is within the Captain's discretion for any number of reasons.

It is also within the DGAC's discretion to pursue anybody who is perceived to abuse the system and I would not want some so and so to spoil the present relaxed arrangements for the rest of us.

It is not unknown for pilots to omit to file a flight plan on intra-Schengen flights and misreport their airfield of departure if questioned; but avoiding Customs on extra-Schengen flights might be taken more seriously.

[IO540]

I would never even dream of misreporting the airport of departure.

Jodelman - many thanks. Perhaps that's not suprising. It would be easy to have a system which auto detects such flight plan filings.

[7AC]

Many French airfields allow you to enter and leave the country if you pre-arrange.
Angers for example will fax or email you a form for the aircraft and passenger details, this is usually returned to you with an official stamp and away you go (or come).
G.A. is highly monitored in France, through flight plans or more often the lack thereof. Well I know!

[patowalker]

Not surprising, Angers is a PNR 24HR Customs airfield.

[IO540]

My hassles in this department have been predominantly to do with "Customs PNR". It's my pet hate in aviation :)

If you think about it, PNR=PPR because only a fool is going to assume that an email/fax/AFTN message will 100% definitely be delivered to the policeman in the Customs office.

I was once refused a landing (from short final) by Padova (Italy) because they "apparently" did not receive any of the several faxes I sent them the day before. On another occassion, Zaragoza (Spain) summarily cancelled my departure flight plan for the same "apparent" reason (which I know for certain was false because I was standing next to the officer at Granada who phoned them with it).

In N Europe they tend to be more laid back but in the "olde job creation countries" they evidently are not...

AFTN messages (e.g. as sent with AFPEx) are no good for this purpose, presumably due to British Leyland type of job demarcation prevailing at airports i.e. the ATC/OPS person is not going to pass the message on to Customs.

So I generally don't fly to any Customs-PNR airport unless I have some sort of acknowledgement that they've got it.

G.A. is highly monitored in France

Yes, they have some sort of national radar service. This normally works very well, and makes for easy CAS transits in most cases. A flight plan is visible to all units along the route, whereas in the UK a VFR flight plan goes basically nowhere (visible) except the two ends.