Attending a European AOPA meeting is truly instructive. The themes covered are quite technical, but one gains a better insight in policy and regulatory topics related to the world of General Aviation. This year’s Edition at Rovaniemi (Artic Circle) was no different.

Atol Avion

International meetings of the International Council of AOPA are often combined with a visit of an Aviation related activity. This year we visited ATOL AVION – Engineered for Freedom. The ATOL 650, a two-seat amphibious light sport aircraft is presented to our group. It is remarkable to discover how light and strong the composite structure is, the look and feel is amazing. They have even built a trailer for it as one can quickly disconnect wings and propellors. Their testpilot explained how safe and easy to fly it is. The cruise speed is 160 km/h and the stall speed 74km/h

Mika Salo

The company Atol Avion presented us to a famous customer of theirs, Mika Salo. He bought such a plane to land at the lake near his house. Mika is a fine and approachable person, Mika Salo is a famous former Formula 1 professional racing driver

Twice a year, we meet with AOPA to discuss European Aviation related topics. For this 141st edition, the topics we discuss are bundled in a hefty agenda:

• EPAS – Our contribution via GA.COM
• Supporting small commercial operators
• Non-Commercial OPS or AOC aircraft
• Part ML : it finally arrived with EU 2019/1383. The problems for commercial ATO/DTO remain however
• CPL-TK requirements for PPL-FI : tackled at ICAO
• U-Space : how to integrate UAV’s in our airspace
• ADS-B developments
• Airspace Infringement Campaign
• The risk of GNSS outages
• Presentation with the results of the IAOPA-GAMA survey
• Cost sharing – AOC required in theory
• 600 kg microlights, so far only a limited national success ?
• GA -blind spot in law enforcement
• Bad GA data : Privacy and ADS-B websites. Deliver or surrender ?
• EuroCAE – How can we contribute ?
• Update on EU-FCL by Neil Wilcock
• Member Communication and benefits, E news and magazines

Social gathering

The AOPA event is also a social gathering where I discuss bilaterally with my counterparts from other countries, always interesting as we have a tradition in Luxembourg of organizing many long range fly-outs and rally’s.