I haven't done that much to be honest but done a reasonable amount of strange approaches between big lumps of rock in both hot and cold climates in other bits of the world.
Most of my flying was further south in the CAT B airfields. The stuff up north was on special flight permits to return people home after an accident. Normally we would't have been able to do it. As you proberly know there is another rule book comes out for commercial operations into those fields. Which if your not a Norweigen carrier the training infrastructure and performance documentation makes it uneconomic to do charters. To be honest normally I would be crying foul but they know what they are doing and they have a pretty good safety record all things considering so thats fine by me. These sort of places need to be flown regularly to keep things safe in even slightly nasty wx. The Vargar route I flew as charters maybe 5 times a year max and it was always 2-3 days of self briefing before I went. And always had the feeling I was on the edge of my abilitys and the aircrafts and its the only route I refused to operate with certain FO's. And it was always a weight dropping off after successfully completeing the trip.
This thread was to discuss none ICAO compliant designed approaches with surrounding dangers to flight safety.
I am sure it doesn't matter what people say the only point you will be looking for is that the Jepp plate is wrong (which it isn't) and you will contact Jepp anyway and more than likely they will change it. And the thousands of pilots across europe the next month will have a moments pause while sticking it in the folder to think "that looks a bit of a bastard" and the world will go on. In reality its proberly less than 10 aircraft a year shoot that approach that arn't Norwegien registered with Scandi pilots on board.
And another cultural difference calling a scotsman an Arschloch really doesn't bother them if they don't respect the person saying it. Someone that comes off an instrument approach without the required visual references doesn't get respect. Be they a 200 hour pilot or a 20k 17 types on there license pilot. They then get it back by saying I stuffed that one up, the plate wasn't the best but thats no excuse.
I have lived and worked in Germany and still have friends there. I also know the standard reaction to critisim from someone who isn't percieved to be socially/proffessionally superiour to themselves (usually gauged by age and number of letters after your name on your card) and more to the point if you are German or not.
About the grey market stuff not really, its not part of my world. The scandi's look after there own and they are perfectly in there rights to have a look at any flight they want to. Just as they are within there rights to spot breath test you on the apron, stick a drug dog onboard and run an engineer over the airframe. All done with politness. I love the place and would be more than happy to work there for a local carrier but unfortunately I don't speak the required lingo. Cracking flying, lovely country and lovely people.
Last edited by mad_jock; 17th Sep 2012 at 08:29.