Originally Posted by
Central Scrutinizer
What experience do you have flying VFR in Morocco (or other Northern African countries)?
Hi, thanks for sharing your experience!
I just did a 10-day trip from Paris to Marrakech and back, and it was memorable.
I agree with everything you mentioned in your post. Except for the Charlie-Charlie, which I didn't get as far as I remember. I'm a French speaker with English R/T qualification. Morocco ATC kept switching between French and English with me, it was pretty funny. "Quebec Alpha, do you have the traffic in sight? - Quebec Alpha, affirm, traffic in sight -Quebec Alpha, autorise a l'atterrissage piste 10...".
The main challenge is definitely that Morocco's ATC requires to follow the published VFR routes. For example, when flying from Marrakech to Rabat, when I got close to Ben-Slimane airport (located 15-min SE of Rabat), I requested a direct to Rabat to avoid pretty bad weather with low clouds and rain on the VFR route. The VFR route goes around Rabat on the east side (heading north) and goes way past Rabat before finally heading southwest to Rabat, a 30-minute route going directly into the bad weather.
Every controller I asked refused to allow a direct route, even when I insisted that it was for weather reasons. My option was to land at Ben Slimane.
Of course, the issue was that I wanted to exit Morocco after this landing, so I needed an airport providing both 100LL and immigration. Only Rabat had both 100LL and immigration. Airports around Casablanca had only one of the 2 options, requiring 2 landings to get both - a not-so-practical option.
I therefore decided to continue in the bad weather.
It was doable and still VFR while getting slightly marginal VFR at times, but I would clearly have preferred a direct route.
I actually wrote a post about this with more detail if anyone is interested. I can't post URLs yet. The website is "airtrips dot xyz". Yes, internet runs out of .com domains...