Inn valley

Off to Innsbruck

Innsbruck is probably one of the most iconic destinations in the Austrian Alps. Surrounded by high mountains in a long river valley, this scenic approach was always on my bucket list.

At the end of July a pilot friend and I flew there from Frankfurt Egelsbach and spent a lovely day in beautiful Austria.

The Plane

We flew a Piper Archer II with two Garmin G5s and a Garmin GTN650. This is the plane I did most of my training on and is one of the workhorses of our club. The only major issue is, that the autopilot is currently very unreliable. It is set to be replaced this fall.

Planned Route

Our route was planed south overhead Stuttgart Airport, towards Kempten, easterly abeam the Alps to Füssen to get a view of the stunning Neuschwanstein castle, then over the border int Austria. From Reutte over the lake Plansee towards Ehrwald and Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze. From there, we follow the valley to the south to Imst and then take the Whisky arrival into Innsbruck.

Our return flight will see us departing to the east, overflying the city and leaving the area via the Mike departure. Then we pass the Ebner Joch (6,421 ft), overfly the lake Achensee and leave Austria towards Bad Tölz. From there we planned to fly an almost straight line to Egelsbach.

The Flight

A round of heads or tales decided I won the privilege of flying us to Innsbruck, while my friend was on radio duty. Because this was my leg, I will only report on the flight to Innsbruck.

We filed our flight plan, fueled up the plane and made departed Egelsbach on runway 26 via Delta. Weather was ok, the wind was calm and the ceilings around Egelsbach were at about 9,000 ft.

After passing Mannheim we asked FIS if a crossing at Stuttgart, either of Airspace D at flight level 75 or the CTR with a midfield crossing, was possible. Both were denied due to traffic. This meant we needed to decent from roughly FL 75 to 3,500 ft in order to pass Stuttgart on the east in airpace E. After leaving the Stuttgart area behind, we overflew Ulm, where my friend grew up. The mighty minster, which is the tallest church in the world, was very easy to spot.

The sky over Ulm was blue, and you had a great view over the black forrest to the west, and the Allgäu to the south-east. In the distance you could also see the alps rising dramatically.

We overflew Memmingen airport, making sure to use the TMZ procedure (setting Squawk and monitoring frequency), and then arrived overhead Kempten-Durach where both of us did our alpine flying training.

Here you could see, that the tops of the mountains were mostly in the clouds, but flying in the valleys shouldn’t be a problem.

As planned we flew the detour to pass Neuschwanstein castle, but with the sun in the south, the shadow of the mountains made the castle hard to spot, so we turned back and into the valley to Reutte. This was both of our first encounter with mountain flying since our training, and it was great not being alone and having someone to help navigate.

After turning east to the Plansee we were truly in the Alps and surrounded by a stunning mountainous landscape. Our next waypoint was the Zugspitze, Germany’s highest mountain (9,718 ft) right at the border to Austria. The summit was truly in the clouds and we were flying well below in the valley at Ehrwald.

Innsbruck Airport in the valley.

Approaching Innsbruck was not too difficult. We listened to the ATIS. Wind was calm, runway in use was 26. This meant flying downwind and then overflying the city on base and final. There was some other jet traffic, that needed to depart runway 08. This caused some delay, and we needed to hold on the south of the airport. Stupidly I flew a left holding pattern. Not flying into controlled airports too often really showed that day.

When the traffic departed, we were cleared to continue our approach and ultimately cleared to land. On short final our clearance was cancelled, and we needed to fly west. In the meantime the runway was inspected for some unkown reason.

A while later we were turned back for a second approach and landing. The landing was great and the taxi behind a follow me was uneventful.

The airport staff was very professional and friendly. We took a bus to the center, had lunch and enjoyed the lovely city.

The landing and stay for the day was roughly 50 Euro, fuel was quite expensive at about 3.70 Euro per Liter.

What have I learned from this flight?

  • Practice controlled airports and holding patterns
  • Innsbruck is nothing to be scared of