It all started as an idea last spring when I met up with my long-standing friend and airline pilot Mike, who was retiring from Thomsonfly after over 30 years, and we decided that getting a French mountain rating would be fun.  I heard nothing more for a few months until he phoned me to ask when could I get a week off and accompany him to Megève for the training. We booked for early October and flew to Geneva with Easyjet.

Our instructor, Vincent, picked us up from our hotel at 0800 every morning on his way from his home to the airfield and, after introductions, showed us our aircraft which was very basic in the equipment department with only a VHF radio and an ELT. There was no VOR, GPS, Attitude Indicator or DI. When I queried this, Vincent said that all flights are strictly VFR in the mountains so there was no need for expensive toys!

We flipped a coin to see who would fly first and I won and sat in the back for our first session of circuits. Now this was not the normal 12 and 13 exercise that we practice in Jersey as all the altiports or strips are very short (between 180m and 400m long) and constructed on the sides of mountains with upslopes of 20% on landing.

You take off downhill away from the mountain, climb to 300 ft above aerodrome level, turn right or left 30 degrees to teardrop back onto final to land uphill facing the mountain. There is little margin for error and no chance to go around.  The art is to fly level on the approach, 300 feet aal, eyeball your aiming point (usually just before your landing point) and when the aiming point is two-fingers’ width above the coaming, reduce power to around 1,700rpm, select full flap and set up a rate of descent of 500fpm (or in our case with metric instruments 3 metres/second, at an airspeed of 115 Km/hr).  If you are fast or slow, control speed with power and control attitude (height) with stick.  This is completely the opposite of what we teach in the UK!

After a pre-flight and strapping in, we started up, performed magneto and pre-take-off checks and then called on the radio ‘FGV je m’aligne et decol’.  All radio calls had to be in French.  The take off is interesting, as you line up on the flat area at the top and can only see forward about 20 metres before the runway goes over the edge and downhill. Mike started his take-off and eased the stick forward, which is normal practice on a taildragger to get the tail up and the aircraft in the flying attitude, but this technique was frowned on by Vincent who wanted mid-stick and let the aircraft fly off in the three point attitude when it was ready. The reason for this became apparent on the rough mountain strips as it preserves the propeller.

Mike’s first approach was naturally all over the place but with Vincent’s calm prompting we arrived safely and then put on power to get to the parking area up the hill and line up to do it all again. I wondered if I could ever master this as it looked very difficult (little did we know but Megève is probably the easiest place that we flew into that week!).

After doing three circuits at Megève we left the circuit and flew through the mountains towards Courcheval and Méribel. All flying is done on the QNH as the strips are all between 3,500 and 8,000ft amsl. We climbed to 9,500ft and set course among the most stunning scenery I’ve ever flown in.  Mike practised three circuits at both Courcheval and Méribel and slowly became more proficient and then it was my turn.

We swapped seats and I became acquainted with yet another type.  Before long we were lined up and roaring down the runway with no hope of stopping if anything went wrong!  My circuits were all over the place and I felt quite disconsolate as I couldn’t see how I could pass a flight test with such basic errors as not being able to keep aircraft level and control the speed.  In Jersey we use the natural horizon as our reference but when in the mountains you have to use the VSI and ASI as your references.  Vincent was very patient with this slow pupil and I got quite used to his prompts ‘respect the aiming’ and ‘power’.  The problem was, I didn’t know whether he meant power on or power off, so a guess either kept him quiet or his voice rose to a crescendo and his hand pushed mine on the throttle.

Vincent then took us to an ‘altistrip’ which was nothing more than a piece of slightly greener grass with a bend in the middle, on the side of a mountain. We couldn’t believe that you could land anything there, but with Vincent’s expert handling we landed, powered up the strip to the top, a quick 180 and took off again.  This was our first experience of these altistrips, which are completely different from the Altiports with paved runways.  We became very proficient in landing and taking off from these strips and after six days and 80 landings at various places we both passed our flight test and are now proud owners of the unrestricted mountain rating (wheels).  The next hurdle will be to return during the winter to complete the ski rating, which looks fun.

We were lucky with the weather with a high pressure system over Europe for the duration of our visit and we only saw cirrus cloud and some fog in the valleys for the whole week, with temperatures in the 20’s.

Chris booked through the Aeroclub de Megève – 00 33 450 213367 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   The cost is €147 per hour solo or dual plus membership of the aeroclub at €120.  Most people need 15-20 hours tuition – Chris completed the course in ten!

This article is an extract from  Jersey Flyer Spring 2007 (2.86 MB)