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Holland

Double Dutch: Mode-S in Holland

Mode S Exclusion Zone in Holland

I am learning Dutch and I love to fly to the Netherlands to practice. But there are strange things going on there. First, the authorities mandated Mode-S transponders for all GA aircraft. Now as a direct consequence, “the radar clutter is increased to such an extent that Schiphol Approach cannot properly provide air traffic control.”

The result: they have banned VFR traffic in a vast area of the country around Amsterdam between the coast and the Ijsselmeer. Flights to and from Schiphol are exempted but if you want to go to Lelystad or points North or East, you have to fly around the ‘transponder prohibited zone’. It’s crazy. Let’s hope the same thing doesn’t happen in the UK when Mode-S becomes mandatory.

More information (in English): AIP SUP 04/09.

Ten awesome days out for pilots

Here are ten days out that I can definitely recommend from personal experience along with detailed airport or destination reviews.

Amsterdam Schiphol Airport (EHAM)

Amsterdam is a big airport.  As a private pilot, this is about as big as you are likely to fly into.

Flying there requires some planning.  The GA terminal is on the Northeast corner of the field and there is a runway right next to it.  If you go in VFR, the approach is fiddly and low-level but you arrive right next to the terminal and have a pretty straightforward time of it.  It means approaching a point several miles east of the field called Point Victor just below 1,500 feet.  This is an easily-identified intersection of roads and canals.  From there you turn towards the airport and begin a gentle descent to Point Bravo which is on the corner of a park.  Once you report Bravo the tower will tell send you to either end of the runway 04-22 for a threshold join or to the centre for a mid-point join.  The runway is long enough to turn at one end at 500 feet as if turning final and still land with plenty of room left.  Avoid aiming at the wrong runway – the one you want is partially obscured by hangars until you get pretty close.

I’m told that flying into Amsterdam IFR in a light aircraft is a pain unless you have to do it because the controllers tend to vector you around a lot to sequence you with faster aircraft and then they land you on the runway on the very opposite side of the airport leading to a 40-minute taxi to the GA ramp.  Just reading through the forty-odd pages of plates was enough to put me off an IFR approach.

On the ground, you’ll be met by a follow me truck and then a van to drive you from the ramp to the terminal.  You can book in over the internet, although be careful to check if you need an arrival slot as well.  Handling was pretty efficient and the terminal was pretty smart with a pilot’s lounge and other facilities.  If you call them on the radio when you are fifteen minutes out they will call a taxi and have it waiting for you.  From plane to taxi took about ten minutes.  However, getting back to the plane was a real problem.

If you want 100LL fuel, you have to taxi to the pumps yourself, they don’t have a bowser.  Best to settle your landing fee, drive out to the plane and taxi it over and pay the fuel guy separately.  We didn’t and it took us an hour of back and forth to settle up and get out.  Considering the handling charge, excluding fuel, was over £150 this is pretty lousy service.

Airport history

Schiphol was opened as a military airfield in 1916 but quickly switched to civil use after the first world war with the national airline KLM beginning operation in 1920 and a hut for passengers arrived in 1921. In 1926 the Amsterdam municipality bought the airport.

A proposal to close both Amsterdam and Rotterdam airport in favour of a new centralised airport didn’t meet with much favour from Amsterdam residents.  In July 1938 more than 15,000 people rallied at the airport in favour of keeping the airport. This is surely a first.

During the war the Germans attacked the airfield and then used it.  By 1945, it had become virtually unusable and it took heroic efforts to allow the first DC-3 to land on 8th July.

Since then the airport has grown and grown with the result that it is one of the largest and busiest airports in Europe and becoming, in the words of the operating company, an Airportcity.

Airport information

KLM Jet Center

Department : SPL/WH

P.O. Box 7700

1117 ZL SCHIPHOL

The Netherlands

Phone: +31(0)20 6492455

International airport: www.schiphol.nl

GA Handling: www.jetcenter.nl

Handling requests can be made online or by phone.

Note that slots are required at busy times.  These can be booked with handling.  See also: www.slotcoordination.nl

Visiting the Netherlands by plane

image Because I have been learning Dutch over the past year or so, I have been flying to Holland on a regular basis to practice both my flying and my (very poor) language skills.

Here are a few articles on this blog about my various Dutch flying experiences and some interesting places to visit when you get there.

Lelystad Aerodrome (EHLE)

I flew to Lelystad, Holland on Saturday. It’s a purpose-built GA airport about 30m east of Amsterdam. The flight from Denham was fabulous in good weather – we flew right over the top of Schiphol at 9,000 feet.

The airport is very welcoming. They have customs and immigration officers on site (although the book says to give four hours notice) and there is a cafe in the small terminal building. The landing fee was around €50 which compares well with about €300 for the same Cirrus at Schiphol the week before.

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Although Lelystad has NDB approaches, they are only active outside daylight hours. Arriving in daylight, you have to end your IFR flight plan just past Amsterdam and descend below 1,500 feet.

The best part about Lelystad is that there is a aviation-themed cafe (with staff in pilot uniforms!) called Flantuas and an excellent aircraft museum – the Aviodrome. Both are a few minutes walk from the terminal.

Flantuas – with aircraft models and a view of the runway

Lelystad’s reconstruction of the Schiphol’s terminal building from the 30s

Outside the Aviodrome with a view of their KLM 747

Day trips to Amsterdam

Screenshot3 I have flown to Amsterdam twice in the last six weeks.  Schiphol is pretty much the largest and busiest airport a private pilot can visit in a single engine aircraft.  Try landing at Heathrow and see what happens!  It’s not cheap (about 250 Euros) but worth it for the experience. You can fly in VFR and I did this a couple of years ago. But these trips involved the full IFR arrival and radar vectored ILSs. 

The planning feels a bit daunting – you need to book handling with KLM JetCenter and make sure you have the necessary slot booked. Then you need to read the pages and pages of Jeppesen notes for the airfield as well as the usual IFR stuff like GARs, flight plans and so on. Although it has loads of runways, once you know which one you’re going to (and they told me when I was half way across the North Sea) it was just like an ILS approach anywhere. Nothing to be daunted by.

When I went in March, they vectored me for an ILS on runway 36R and then I broke right at a few hundred feet to land on 04 which runs up to the GA parking area. Yesterday, they told me to expect 18R (which is a couple of miles taxi from the GA terminal) and then changed it to 22.  They brought me in on a four mile final and I had to drop down from FL70 in short order.  I still managed to put it down on the numbers and make the first exit right into the GA parking area.  Great fun, especially with a 12 knot gusting crosswind.Screenshot1

In March I went with my Dutch teacher to practice my Dutch. We went to the Anne Frank house, a pancake restaurant and then she had me visiting various shops trying (in very broken Dutch) to find and buy different things.  Yesterday, I went with a couple of friends to visit the Rijksmuseum and we had lunch at Hans and Grietje, a cafe nearby.

P1020755The main museum is closed for rebuilding but there’s a newly-refurbished wing open around the corner. It’s much less indigestible than the main museum used to be. With so little space, only the best work makes the cut. Every object and painting is the best of the best. There are four Vermeers and more more Rembrandts than you can shake a stick at. Including the famous Night Watch.  It took a couple of hours to visit and every moment was thoroughly enjoyable.

The light of Holland favours paintings even when it is grey and overcast but yesterday it was sunny and warm. It is hard to imagine a more pleasant place to be on such a day than Amsterdam.