I have spent 8 months planning a trip to Spain.
No survival training nor shipping of fuel was required, yet it has still taken 8 months. That's is not to say that I have spent Mon-Fri 9-5 planning the trip for 8 months. Rather that I have been gradually working away at it over 8 months. No doubt it could be done much quicker if needed.
The big delay in thing like this result not from the flight, but from the people. There is a group of 5 of us taking 2 aircraft.
The idea was conceived last October, and a rough outline of the trip was prepared, together with a flyer for our club Christmas party. I met with a colleague once or twice over this period to organise the rough route and the flyer. The idea was presented to the other club members at our Christmas Party. People where then given a period to decide if they wanted to join up.
We then had to meet as a group to agree the final route and over night stops.
Hotels had to me investigated and booked. Each individual flight had to be planned, and each airport be looked up. (We are visiting far more airports than is actually necessary, resulting in a larger amount of work to be done.) This was spread out over a number of weekends. We would spend maybe an hour or two doing a little work, before enjoying a fine lunch, or a local flight.
You see, the planning becomes as much a social event as a chore.
Some things take time, unless you rush them. For example, I have had to PPR 11 different airports. Rather than phone each up and try out my broken French, and non existent Spanish, I faxed each one. A week later I had replies from about half, so I faxed a reminder to the rest. A week later I had replies from all. Now I certainly could have phoned each up, and got the necessary info in about 1.5 hours, but I was in no rush.
Chart for example have to be ordered. You also want to check their revision dates, so that they aren't revised before your trip. They take awhile to arrive.
Aircraft have to be serviced, to ensure that they have sufficient hours before their 50 hour check. (We will be using about 25 hours.)
More than the flight has to be planned too. This is very much a holiday, and we want to do some fun stuff too. That takes time and research too.
Some people are happy to walk into a travel agent, purchase a two week package holiday and do no more than pack a bag and head to the airport. I on the other hand like to arrange my own holiday, and invest some time into picking the destination, the accommodation, the activities etc. This can take a number of months. If the flight is also your holiday, then it's likely to take longer than simple flight planning.
I flew to France for 2 weeks last year. It was my first (non-commercial) flight to the Continent. I think I spent 3 or 4 months planning both the flight and the holiday element.
Having now flown there, I no longer have to research the local rules. I have the charts on my floor at the moment (for the Spanish trip). No doubt if I decided I wanted to fly somewhere there tomorrow, I could plan the FLIGHT in a couple of hours at most.
When you haven't been to that country before, you don't have any of the charts etc, you need to organise aircraft, you need to find out who wants to come, and you need to make decisions by committee things take much longer. Add into the equation the fact that it's a holiday, and you want to plan that too, 6 months does not seem an unreasonable time.
Now if you need to start doing survival training organising international gun permits etc......how long is a piece of string....
dp