Cool.


I'll summarize what I think I've learned. Some of this may be wrong, but it represents my current knowledge.

You can cross without an HF radio. The two routes are:

CYYR BGBW BIRK EGPF southern route

CYFB BGSF BIRK EGPF northern route

Longest legs about 700 nm. If you have very good range, you might be able to do CYFB BIRK non stop. You will need to fly at FL250+ to get HF coverage on that route. Carrying a sat phone as a back up is suggested. Weather in Greenland is often fickle so planning alternates and fuel can be tricky. The 690A range is about 1300 nm with healthy reserves, which is similar to my plane, so you should have no trouble.

Forget about doing any other routes, they are much longer (like CYYT EINN 1700 nm), and they require HF radio. Given the weather and length of flight, just go the Greenland way. Don't do the crossing in one day, stop and rest.

If you want an HF radio, there are companies that rent portable radio sets based on ham radio gear for not too much money. Main issue was the antenna installation. I was not going to bother as the extra fuel for the non HF routes is minimal.

Your insurance will likely require you to have two pilots. My broker indicated that would be the case for me and I was fine with that. I would volunteer to be your second pilot, but I have no more experience than you. My insurance did not require the second pilot to have crossing experience, however.

You will need a life raft, the Canadians will insist.

Once in Europe, you will need 8.33 KHz radios, 406 MHz ELT, and mode S (1090ES ADS-B qualifies since it includes mode S). There is no WAAS, no XM radio, no ADS-B weather. Many more NDBs. If I needed to navigate to one, I was going to use GPS whether legal or not.

You will need insurance and Europe requires high limits, something like $11M for your class airplane. My broker suggested it would cost me $2500 additional insurance for my trip, crossing twice and 4+ months in Europe. This for a $600K value MU2 with $5M liability in the US. I am told they rarely check the insurance requirement, but I wasn't going to chance it.

On arrival, you will be doing a "temporary importation" of your airplane. I could not find out if there are fees associated with this and how much they would be. It seems to be a somewhat informal process.

Beware of carrying EU citizens in your airplane and being accused of being a charter operation or cabotage. If that happens, they may assess VAT against the value of your airplane (up to 20%). If your plane is registered in the name of a corporation (as mine is), there is some indication that makes this more likely.

Due to low class A airspace floors, flying VFR in a turboprop is not often practical. There are route filing tools for IFR flight. RocketRoute, Autorouter seem to be the most popular. The routes are many waypoints, every 10-20 nm is not unheard of, often long and convoluted. Having a route that is > 20% longer than great circle is fairly common.

Picking up IFR at the start is different. In US, get void time. In Europe, you may have to fly in IMC in class G and pick up in the air. Seems a bit crazy to me. Your flying is much easier if you have VMC at both ends, unlike the US.

If you go to Germany or Switzerland, they check for a noise certificate. If you don't have one, expect higher fees.

My main issue is that GA infrastructure is limited and choosing airports is difficult. Arranging fuel, parking, ground transport, fees, etc, seemed complex. Unlike US where the FBO takes care of it for you, the services might all be done by different companies, one for fuel, one for parking, etc. Jet fuel is generally available everywhere.

You may want to check into what fuel cards work in Europe (WFS, AirBP for example). Airports often close at night, or Sundays, or some other thing that might interfere with your ability to go when you want. In the end, the difficulty of choosing airports with adequate information was the thing that I got most frustrated with. Any airport with an instrument approach is a major one, expect high fees. Other airports can be grass, or small.

Enroute charges will apply to IFR flights. Eurocontrol worked out to about $125/hour for my plane, yours will be similar. Varies by country a bit. I can detail how it gets charged if you want.

Customs at small airports is often handled by local police. Some countries are not part of the Schengen Accord, which means customs when crossing that line. Notably UK is not, and right now France has (or had) suspended Schengen due to the Paris attacks. Customs often needs 24 hour advance notice. Most airports are also prior permission required and they can get pretty upset if you don't have it when landing, so get it in writing.

The web site euroga.org is a pretty good place to ask questions and converse with European pilots. There are a selection of trip reports which can provide some insight into destinations and processes. There are very few turbine owners and examples, our class airplane is a "business" airplane rarely seen in personal flying.

I never did figure out exactly when handling agents would be required, be a good idea, or not needed. Some airports require them even for based aircraft (for example EGNX).

All airports are different. All countries are different. It takes diligence to figure out the local knowledge.

Good luck on your trip and write reports on what you experience.

Mike C.

Patrick - you being a Brit (I think) and probably have financial presence in the UK still, I would just insure the plane via Europe for the crossing. The Euro side seems a lot more relaxed and less neurotic when it comes to crossing insurance. They will not ask for second pilot on crossings etc most of the time, is what I've heard. I know of VFR only pilots with 150hr TT that have gotten insured to fly solo.

You could also just have a two policies that join up: one normal Euro coverage one (that covers Greenland), and then a US one that covers Canada. That way you're covered for the crossing automatically.

Thanks Adam, I'm not British, although I lived in Europe long enough to find America to be a very foreign and strange place, upon my return. I'm mid-Atlantic I suppose... aka

With a piston single, I had a difficult time getting crossing insurance in the UK a couple years ago (EU to US), ended up using a US insurer, perhaps that was non-typical. I've found the US insurers to generally be very accommodating.

Excellent summary Mike !

You get an A for this Homework project !


ps: I would have given you an A+ but there was one minor error "Customs at small airports is often handled by local police." Customs & Immigration is always handled by Customs & Immigration Officers, period.
"

Aha! Honorary Brit?



My info is quite a few years old by now, so could very well have changed. But there was a gentleman named Sam Rutherford who got coverage for Atlantic crossing with only 150hrs TT and no IR a few years ago! Must have been an anomaly or fluke.

If you sign up to forum EuroGA.com (which you should), there's a guy there names JasonC who owns and flies a Mustang. He's done the Atlantic crossing multiple times in his previous Jetprop (the Piper kind), and he'd be able to steer you towards the right European insurer, if that's an option. Or as I said just get a policy that covers to Greenland and then combine that with your US one.

Thanks Mike. I am saving this thread because of that last post.

Lots of good info.

I can see myself going to Europe but I would stop in Ireland or Scotland and take the train or fly commercial for inter Europe.

I agree it's not worth the hassle and the European trains are great and flying commercial is cheap.

There is also a round the world trip in my future. Just want to graduate a few more kids to free up some time!

I will use a handler for that.

I remember reading a particular trip report on EuroGA that the customs was handled by a local police guy and the writer seemed to indicate this was not unusual in certain countries. Of course, I can't find that report right now...

In any case, apologies for my mistake.

Mike C.

My objective was exactly backwards of that. The crossing was just to get the plane to Europe, then I wanted to fly it a lot inter Europe. The dream was to be able to use the airplane as effectively as I do in the US to go when and where I wanted with ease.

So when that dream started to discolor somewhat with all the effort to fly around Europe, the plan kind of fell apart.


Exactly.

It would be fun, but it also would be consuming of my time to the point of taking away from the travel purpose itself. My primary objective was to enable the travel, not to go on a flying adventure, if you catch my meaning.

Mike C.

Steve, do you have a rough route in mind?

Which just goes to show that you shouldn't believe EVERYTHING you read on these forums

No apologies needed, just a minor inoffensive error.

In the UK, local police sometimes do substitute for customs and immigration at non-customs airports. They come to the field at the request of the border control (and don't really know what they are checking for...)
I have been met by them - so I know it happens from firsthand experience.

The fact that local police or other agents come to the field to check out arrivals does not substitute for Customs & Immigration.

All law enforcement agents can question and report whatever, but they are in no way substituting for another branch.

Example: IF the police agent suspected a Customs infraction, then he will have to call in the Customs agents to take action.

My friend flew his A36TN from EDPA to EBKT on Friday. I will not show the flight plan he filed, but the one he flew was very simple, EDPA DCT TIPUT, DCT EBKT.
TIPUT is a reporting point directly on the German/Belgian border and practically in a straight line on the 300NM route. The only reason ATC gave this reporting point was for handover between Langen Radar and Brussels Airways. Doesn't get much simpler than that.
If any US BT'er is coming over to Europe to fly, we (EU BTers) can take care of him.
Usually a phone call to departure and destination will remove a lot of uncertainty for the first trip.

The trains are great, but you won't do a weekend trip from the UK to Italy on the trains. You"ll either not do the trip or fly commercial on a charter/budget carrier. With your Mu2 all of europe is a weekend trip. Will you work remotely during your wife's europe assignment? If no, you'll have plenty of time during the week to set up logistics and flight plans for the weekend.

That said, I could probably spend 3 months in weekends just exploring england, scotland and Wales by train and rental car.

Trains will do Paris, Brussels. Nobody should ever fly London to Paris with the Eurostar.

For anything else, it is the regional budget carriers.


That was the idea. The problem is that, especially in the fall with short daylight, much of the flying would be at night and that severely limits the number of airports you can use as many close at sunset. So you end up at the big airports which is costly and often complex.

Since I and my wife need to positively be back Monday morning, our departure needs to be highly reliable in all weather. Strategies where you depart IMC into class G bother me, particularly with terrain like you find around Switzerland, for example.


Yes, as I did in 2007, I will be putting in 40-60 hours/week running my company remotely. Worked pretty well with video teleconferencing and a VoIP desk phone.


Did that last time. Was hoping to expand the exploration radius this time.

Mike C.