We are 26 aircraft strong. The Private Pilot Expedition to Georgia 2026 roster is now confirmed at 26 aircraft and around 60 pilots and passengers — a mix of European touring aircraft and modern ULMs from more than 10 countries.
The response has been remarkable. What started as an idea among a handful of pilots has grown, in a matter of weeks, into a genuine European aviation project. Crews from Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, Czech Republic, Türkiye and beyond will fly their own aircraft from home base to the Caucasus and back — over 4,000 nautical miles across eleven countries in fifteen days.
Who’s flying
The fleet reflects the state of European light aviation in 2026. Certified touring aircraft — Cirrus SR22, Diamond DA62, Piper PA-28, Cessna 182 — flying alongside modern high-performance ULMs from Blackwing, Bristell, Shark, Risen, WT9 and Tecnam. Cockpits are digital, autopilots are standard, and cruise consumption on the ULM side lands closer to a family car than to a 1980s touring aircraft.
We have put a public Participating Crews page live at expedition.privatepilot.lu/our-crew so anyone can meet the fleet, the pilots and the aircraft photos we have collected — credit to Planespotters.net for the majority of the shots and to the pilots themselves for the rest.
Why 26, and not more
The soft cap sits at 20 European crews plus 6 Türkiye-based crews. Beyond that, the operational logistics — customs formalities at eleven borders, hotel rooms across ten overnight stops, fuel coordination at both grass and asphalt airfields, and per-aircraft permit paperwork with the Turkish and Georgian civil aviation authorities — become impractical for a single-organiser expedition. The waiting list for this edition is now closed and we are not accepting new applications.
Anyone interested in future expeditions can still register their interest at expedition.privatepilot.lu/waitlist — we are keeping the door open for whatever comes next.
What happens now
Every confirmed crew has full access to a personal dashboard covering aircraft details, passport data, insurance, route participation, document uploads for the Turkish and Georgian CAAs, and the pre-departure briefings. The paperwork is genuinely heavy for this route — each authority needs a slightly different bundle per aircraft — but we have built the platform to make one submission serve both.
Over the coming weeks the focus is operational readiness: firming up hotel bookings, closing the CAA approval loop, and running the pre-departure briefings that will keep 26 aircraft coherent as one group despite different cruise speeds, different licences and different comfort with cross-border procedures.
We are a long way from doing this the way a commercial tour operator would run it. Every crew flies its own aircraft, under its own responsibility, at its own pace. What we build together is the coordination that makes that possible — and the friendships that come out of a week of shared flying, shared meals and shared arrivals in a place most of us have never been together as a group.
The countdown starts here.
Follow the expedition
Day-by-day updates from the road and the sky:
📸 Instagram — @expeditionprivatepilot
📘 Facebook — Expedition Private Pilot
Peter Sodermans
Expedition Coordinator, Luxembourg to Georgia Expedition 2026
