Amershaman
Second Officer
Flight distance : 12822 ft
United Kingdom
Offline
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Replies reward +4 Points
randy.sauder Posted at 4-7 14:41
Hi. I've been to and flown in and across Greece many times (including Santorini ). Greece in general, is not prohibitive at all- in fact their regulations are very 'friendly'. FYI, the people and police are very chill as well. Santorini is spectacular with a drone. Last time I flew was in Aug of 2017. However, most of the Island is restricted airspace as of I believe Jan 1, 2018. Up until then, most of the island outside of the one airport's exclusion zone was open to drone operations. They expanded the controlled airspace to include ALL of the town of OIA (the farthest town, on the west/aka sunset side). Prior to this much of OIA was an NFZ-- except the corner, most populated / picturesque ). It is all NFZ now. Even prior to this, you can see "NO Drone Zone" sign in several places in OIA...these were not official/legal. To fly there you should/must be highly respecting everyone's use/enjoyment, and fly far away from people and don't be a bother by flying over properties...stick to flying 'over-the-crater's edge'- the vids are best there anyways. There are 2 heliports as well, one near OIA, the other on the opposite side of the island. I'm certain they extended their NFZ to blanket all of OIA because of the frequent heli-tours that fly over the far corner of OIA. Incidentally, none of these pilots obey Greece aviation regulations....they fly well under the ceiling limit. Not many laws are followed as they should in Greece. Their regulations do require permission from the airport as you say...however I doubt they have their systems/process active to even provide this; this lack of system/organization is 'typical Greece'. There is one far corner in the East that is outside of NFZ space- at least last time I consulted their airmaps. Many islands such as Santorini are by nature NFZ's entirely these days. Don't fret this too much...Santorini is spectacular and even without a drone you will be able to get 'drone-like' aerial pics/vids!!! I'm leaving out bits of detail of course...feel free to PM me if you want any other info about Santorini. BTW...the rest of greece is super for drone flights, it ranks as one of my favorites.
Hi Randy. Thanks for all the very useful information. I kind of figured that Greece would have a fairly laid back approach to enforcement, and was thinking to take my drone along and 'see how it felt' (e.g. talk to the hotel owner, see if anyone else is flying. etc.). But what you say about the expansion of the airport NFZ to cover nearly all of Santorini really puts the lid on it. I think now I'll leave the drone at home and just enjoy the views and the local wine a bit more :-) |
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