08.03.2021: I took advantage of the decent weather today and went flying with my wife. That’s one of the advantage of working in your home office, you can start working early in the morning, go flying in the afternoon and work into the evening, still finishing a full workday.
As the weather forecast included light to moderate icing conditions from FL50 up, we decided to stay low for once, looking at a lake we had visited two weeks ago. To go there we crossed once more the CTR of Zurich Airport, this is becoming our standard departure route. I switched to Zurich Tower frequency immediately after leaving the circuit in Lommis, from where it is maybe five to eight minutes of flight to the reporting point where one has to reqeust permission to cross the CTR, but during these minutes the radio stayed completely silent. We were already joking that our radio might be broken, as in normal times you would hear a nearly continuous sequence of radio messages, but things have definitely changed. When I called for crossing I was immediately cleared across the entire CTR, and wasn’t even asked to report anywhere (which I did none the less at the reporting points marked as mandatory on the VAC).
How much things have changed can also be seen from the following NOTAM, which I noticed when doing my flight preparations:
LS B1480/20
B) 2020NOV14 1158 C) 2021MAR27 1930 EST
E) COVID-19: ZURICH LSZH
AD SLOTS FOR VFR ACFT TEMPO AVBL MON-FRI 0720-1930, SAT-SUN AND
PUBLIC HOL 0900-1800 WO ORDINARY TIME RESTRICTIONS. FURTHER
RESTRICTIONS MAY APPLY AT SHORT NOTICE DUE TO MET OR OPS REASONS.
In short, while there were only a limited number of slots available for VFR flights at Zurich airport prior to the COVID pandemic, and only during off-peak hours, now you can ask for VFR slots any time of the day and any day of the weeek.
Below the lake I mentioned above, called Hallwilersee. We recently walked around that lake, but as this takes maybe six to seven hours and as the weather was pretty cold we did it in two legs.
We then returned towards Lommis, passing south of Zurich, which can be seen below behind the Uetliberg, a hill just south of the city. We then crossed the CTR of Dübendorf air base. Again I got cleared to cross immediately and via the route I had requested, but here at least a number of helicopters of the air force could be heard on the radio.
Finally we passed the Hörnli, a hill of around 4’000 ft, which lies around 10 miles south of Lommis. One can see the mountains in the background, visibiltiy was definitely a lot more than 10 km, but through a kind of haze.
