Flying a float plane has been on my bucket list for a long time. After three unsuccessful attempts—the last one cancelled due to wildfires—I finally made it to Biscarrosse in southwestern France to make the dream a reality.

The Journey South

Flying outbound, we stopped at La Rochelle for customs clearance. Arriving right in the middle of the day between commercial flights meant a 10-minute wait for officers to arrive. As is often the case, it seems you always need to call them on arrival, we were told to wait in the main terminal’s outside duty-free office. Customs done, we discovered the airfield café was closed. Fortunately, Geoff and I survived on the emergency flapjacks I had stashed on board for such an ocassion!.

The route south from La Rochelle to Biscarrosse required navigating complex airspace, avoiding military danger areas, and spending a significant portion of the leg below 1,000 feet. After landing at Biscarrosse, we got a taxi into town and found a very nice restaurant with steak on the menu.

Taxis, Hangars, and the Piper Cub

Getting a taxi in Biscarrosse turned out to be hard to do. (There are only 5 of them for two towns). So we had to book one earlier than planned. That gave us extra time to hang out in the seaplane hangar and clubhouse to acclimatise. Not such a bad problem:-)

There, we met up with our instructor, François, who walked us through the briefing. The main priority? Mastering the mechanics and checklist discipline of deploying and retracting the amphibious retractable gear.

The flying itself was epic. A Piper Cub on floats is a slow, gentle, and remarkably docile beast. The seaplane base sits right under the airfield ATZ, which itself is sandwiched below a 1,000 ft military sector. As a result, we spent most of the flight at just 300 feet! I practised several approaches, water landings, docking manoeuvres, and even taxiing up the slipway to turn around on the promenade. To the delight of onlookers.

After a post-flight debrief, we enjoyed a fantastic lunch at the airfield café before starting our return journey to La Rochelle for customs. I took the opportunity to hand-fly the RNP 27 VFR procedure again, with Geoff acting as safety pilot.

At La Rochelle, customs weren’t expecting us, despite an email I had sent three days prior. After showing them the email request, they quickly processed us, and we were back in the air right on plan.

As we approached the Isle of Wight, the cloud base was less than forecast so we diverted to our alternate airport, Lee-on-Solent.

Once on the ground, with no signs of the weather improving, we faced a new challenge: finding our way out of a locked airfield perimeter! Seeing the Coastguard helicopter crew nearby, we walked over to their hangar, and they kindly let us through the gate.

After several phone calls with Border Force regarding the diversion, we got an Uber into Fareham. Where a curry and a beer was very welcome after the diversion and unnecessary stress added by the Border Force discussions!

Short Video