Reims (Prunay)   LFQA

Date of Visit = July 1998

Pilot: = Chris Belton

e-mail = chris@yarboo.freeserve.co.uk

Field Report = A great little airport, it's even got customs. If you go through the Reims-Champigny CTR to get to it at the weekend, there is usually a recorded message on the Approach frequency (activated by pressing the transmit button) telling you it's closed and you are free to transit.

There's a regional office of the French CAA (whatever it's called) at Reims, and they like to keep you on your toes, so if you land there at lunch-time on a flightplan you MUST ring and close it because no-one else will, and you'll get a message to ring them and a demand for a written explanation. I spent half an hour on the phone trying to get a German pilot off this particular hook. I've also had to do the same for myself after we filed a flightplan over the radio for a flight from Germany to Reims: it's illegal to file in the air if the flight crosses an international boundary. Fortunately I had plenty of good excuses, such as everyone had disappeared from the departure airfield (a gliding strip in the Black Forest) on the morning of our departure, so that the nearest phone was 8 miles away, and the pine martens had chewed through the wiring on the only available car.

As if that wasn't enough, on another occasion we were met by five customs officers and a dog, on the pretext that I had failed to file a flightplan (I was able to produce a copy). Presumably they were interested because we were flying in from Rotterdam. They went through all the luggage, examining my elderly passenger's toothpowder with care, and rolling the ball in the roll-on deodorant. Only one box was left in the aircraft, because I couldn't lift it. I was feeling a bit hard-done-by, so when they asked what was in it I answered "grass". It was, or "miscanthus sinensis giganteus" to be precise. A present from a Dutch nursery for a friend's garden. Fortunately the dog agreed with me.

Photos: John Hardy