Which charts do people prefer for Europe?
Get yourself down to a pilot shop, pull out all the charts you can find, and make up your own mind which you prefer.
My personal preference after just one flight to France/Belgium: In France, I couldn't follow the Jepp charts - the military low-flying areas, in particular, were not well depicted. On the French ICAO charts, however, they were no problem (which makes sense really, since the layout of the French charts will be designed to clearly depict French airspace). In Belgium, though, the Jepp charts were no problem. In fact, my French chart covered the entire area of Belgium that I needed to fly in, but I discovered that some Belgian airspace is not shown on the French chart (and some UK airspace, too), so I regarded suplimenting the French ICAO chart with a Jepp chart in Belgium as a necessity.
Are these military corridors crossable at all, like a MATZ?
Some are, some aren't. I found all the information I needed in the Jepp trip-kit, but I had to look pretty hard for it. I followed up with a phone-call to the relevant controller, who didn't understand English well enough to be able to answer the question.... but he suggested that I could fax him the question, since his understanding of written English was ok, and half an hour later I had a detailed reply by fax.
FFF
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