customs airport south of Paris?

[Phil Histine]

I'm planning to fly from London via Folkstone to an airfield near Toulouse, and with an endurance of about 4.5 hours Le2K is just a bit to soon to be ideal for a refuelling stop. Anyone know of a good combined customs/refueling stop en route and ideally south of Paris?

[IO540]

St Yan LFLN is a nice laid back place. Customs PNR.

[Artistic Intention]

Orleans LFOZ probably fits your requirements and is en-route.

[CelticRambler]

Châteauroux, LFLX, is almost exactly due south of Paris and half way to Toulouse with full customs facilities including veterinary clearance :ok:.

[A and C]

Tours & Troyes are both good for a tech stop on the way south.

[IO540]

Before we list every airport in France which has Customs :) this kind of question does highlight the need for better pilot training for going A-B in Europe.

The pilot will need to buy the VFR maps (ooops I meant to say charts; time to hand my license back to the CAA) and on those you can see the airports.

The next step is to contact them. Usually google will turn up a website for the airport, via which one can contact it and get the real current info straight from the horse's mouth.

Failing that, the AIP (http://www.eurocontrol.int/aim/public/standard_page/web_eur.html) should have data which, for N Europe anyway, is reasonably OK. Then you get airport directories like this (http://www.handbook.aero/hb_airports.html). Some more notes here (http://www.peter2000.co.uk/aviation/operational/index.html).

[john ball]

Toussus is just south of Paris and is 1hr 30 mins approx in my RV6 from Biggin -- don't know how fast or what you fly. Alternatively Poitiers also does have customs and is half way to Toulouse and is almost a straight line due south from Biggin and avoids most of the military zones etc around Paris.

[Phil Histine]

Thanks for all those helpful suggestions, much appreciated. And thanks for the pointers too, IO540, although as a reasonably experienced IMC-rated pilot I'm perfectly well trained to fly around Europe, having flown across Belgium, Holland, Sweden, Germany, Austria and northern France - but not, so far, down south. I know how to navigate myself around the French AIP and the Euro Control website in both French and English and I also know what charts are, both VFR and IFR, but as we all know the presence of custom facilities are not announced on Jepp or IGN charts. I could of course make a list of every possible airfield en route and then locate them on the SIA website and then open the relevant pdfs one by one to discover their customs status. But as there is a forum of experienced and helpful fellow fliers willing and able to offer their personal advice on this forum I've chosen to begin here.

[IO540]

I could of course make a list of every possible airfield en route and then locate them on the SIA website and then open the relevant pdfs one by one to discover their customs status

Sadly, that is about it, in Europe. There is no really quick way.

There are better ways e.g. a copy of Navbox, where you can click on each airport and see the facilities. That info is claimed to come out of the AIPs. This is a pretty quick process, and the data is fairly accurate for N Europe. Jeppesen Flitestar is another one but I have found Navbox to be more accurate on airport facilities data.

But no matter where you got the info from, nothing beats contacting the airport directly.

[bookworm]

But no matter where you got the info from, nothing beats contacting the airport directly.

Nonsense. Nothing beats asking someone who has personal experience of using the airport. Which is why Phil asked the question on the forum. You should know: you have some of the best trip reports on the web, with more more practical information than you get from an AIP.

Orleans LFOZ (http://www.loiret.aeroport.fr/) is a nice little AFIS airfield, with AvGas available via AirBP card or by paying at the aero club. The tower/ops/management responds to requests by email promptly. Customs is PPR, via filling in a form they will send you. Be aware that the airport is a long way from Orleans, so if the fuel stop turns into an overnight, it's a EUR 50 ride each way to go into town.

Rouen LFOP would also work for customs. I haven't fuelled there although I couldn't imagine problems. But it may be further north than you want.

[IO540]

Nonsense. Nothing beats asking someone who has personal experience of using the airport. Which is why Phil asked the question on the forum. You should know: you have some of the best trip reports on the web, with more more practical information than you get from an AIP.Come on, bw, you should know better. Try flying further than Germany and you find that "things" can change from one week to the next.

Somebody I have just been in touch with popped down to the Adriatic and landed on Losinj - a lovely little well organised place. But... temporarily no avgas.

This is why all the airfield reports on certain pilot forums are of limited value. If the report from say 2009, or a post today from a 2009 visit, says that there is ample GA parking, that may still be the case in 2011. But if it says that they have avgas and need 6hrs PNR for Customs, that is worth less than the inkjet ink used in printing it out.

The underlying issue is that there is no unified way of digging it out. In the USA, they have the airport facility directory and, together with the whole place being really well organised anyway, you can fly all over the USA just with that. There is no such thing in Europe; the AIPs are good for N Europe but no more than a guide for S Europe (as Germany et al are learning, having lent a few hundred BN to some of these places ;) ;) )and some things like avgas availability can change overnight.

I discovered this pretty fast when I started doing my long VFR trips in 2003. Something like 30-50% of the "little but important" airport details in the AIPs were simply wrong, and this carried through to the flight planning software airport data. It's not an issue ... unless you are flying the next morning.

It is good to ask on the forum. I was just making the point that nothing beats asking the airport directly, and couldn't resist my usual rant that the PPL gives you worldwide privileges which you can't actually use :)

[bookworm]

Come on, bw, you should know better. Try flying further than Germany and you find that "things" can change from one week to the next.

Do they have food worth flying to further away than Germany? Well, OK, Prague then... :) Fair enough, and I missed that you were in fact the first to offer Phil a recommendation (even if it was 150 miles off his route).

So, yes, get recommendations from other pilots and check that their info is up-to-date.

[IO540]

German and Czech food is OK if you like your arteries reduced in cross sectional area by about 10% a year :)

I don't think St Yan is 150nm off the route to Toulouse.