Swiss signs the Schengen treaty

[BackPacker]

Just heard on the news that Swiss signed the Schengen treaty yesterday evening. However, Swiss is still not part of the European Union so although the border controls have been formally abolished, there's no free flow of goods: you still have to formally import and export your things with the help of customs.

Anybody knows the practical consequences of this for GA? Will we still be required to fly to/from a customs airport when we enter/leave Swiss airspace?

[goatface]

I think that the big advantage will be that you can now declare passengers to Immigration in advance and, providing they don't want to see you, (as cn be the case in any circumstances) you can go directly to the hangar/club rather than having to go through all the niff naff and trivia.

It would seem that if you have any freight or non EU passengers to declare you still have to go through the pre existing procedures.

[PlasticPilot]

In principle, any flight coming from the Schengen area can fly to any Swiss airport. But remember that a flight plan is still mandatory for border crossing.

As all the Schengen stuff is still new for Switzerland, and a bit fuzzy, I suggest that you give a phone call to your destination airport. There will certainly be someone well informed there.

I know this answer sounds "undocumented", but despite being a member of the Swiss aero-club (even if I'm no longer living there...) I don't have many information. I also checked official websites (BAZL - Bundesamt für Zivilluftfahrt (BAZL)), but could not find any relevant information for GA... not even in French or German. Sorry.

[PlasticPilot]

A bit more information... but this applies only to LSZS. It's the best I could find.

http://www.engadin-airport.ch/filead...Airport_gb.pdf