Flying IFR through Italy
Last summer we visited the Lido airfield near Venice in Italy on our way to an aviation event on the island Sicily all the way in the south of Italy. After having visited Courchevel, we set course to Lido near Venice.
From Venice, we flew onwards the next day to an aviation event held at a hotel in the south of the Italian island Sicily called Eremo della Guibiliana. The airfield is called Ragusa – Giubiliana Airfield and is part of the hotel and considered one of the most southernly located airfields on the European continent. The airfield, however, does not have its own ICAO code, so in the flight planning stage we have to look for a VFR departure from the grass airstrip on Lido Island just off the coast of Venice to join IFR for a long flight all the way south of Sicily to land again at a ZZZZ location.
The above building at the Lido airfield near Venice is completely renovated and hosts a nice café inside. To get from the airfield to Venice you could go by shuttle boat or other ways.
The below screencast shows you how we prepared for our flight from Lido to Ragusa – Giubiliana Airfield on Sicily using our AeroPlus Aviation Flightplan App in combination with SkyDemon. We found a nice IFR route and had a great flight down to Sicily.
The actual flight took us into the early night with the sun setting over the sea while flying inbound to the airfield on Sicily. The airfield did have runway lights and we were welcomed by the hotel staff on arrival just in time for the initial aviation event dinner outside on the airfield as you can see from one of the pictures below.
It was relatively easy to find the airfield using the map to search for the right location from within our flight plan app, then to drop a pin there on that spot and mark that as the ZZZZ destination. Also, even though this is then a ZZZZ destination, the routing engine was able to provide us with an IFR route through Italy that was without too much overhead. It was easy to move the flight plan afterwards into SkyDemon and have the complete route on my iPad as a backup while flying into the night into a private airstrip. It gave me the confidence I needed for this flight.
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