59 Marrakech - Cascais

22. May 2007

I spend Monday afternoon walking about in the Medina, the old part of Marrakech, and Tuesday morning I just had to go back into town to see the Djemaa el Fna square. I missed out on it the day before.
 

At noon I was back in the airport for a hassle free emigration process and, soon I was on the tarmac ready for departure.
 

I had decided to go to Cascais in Portugal, a coastal town just out of Lisbon, because there was supposed to be a Cessna dealer there. Due to my detour around Brazil, I had to have a 100 hour check done.  But first I had to land in Lisbon itself, as Cascais is not a port of entry. I had tried to contact custom and immigration in Portugal in order to be allowed to land in Cascais, but I was not able to find an email address or telephone number. I also tried to ring the tower in Lisbon airport, but nobody answered the phone.
 

And Portugal is one of those countries, that do not publish their AIP on the Internet, so no information was available here either.
 

So I was off to Lisbon, flying at 11000 feet.
 

Arriving in Lisbon, I got vectored to runway 21 for the ILS approach. 
 

On the ground I was instructed to follow a Marshall car to parking, and then instructed to contact one of 4 handling companies!
 

I was in for a very bureaucratic and unreasonable 2 hour session, having to pay 125 Euro in landing charge and more than 200 Euro for "handling". On top of that I was told, that I could not land in Lisbon without a "slot"?
 

So now I have to explain why I did that. It's the first time I have heard about requirement for a slot for a small plane. I had filed an IFR plight plan, but that appears not to be enough?
 

How happy I was to get out of that joint, and fly the 10 minutes to Cascais.
 

Only to find out, once more, that the so-called Cessna Repair Station, that Cessna advertises on the web to be located in Cascais, did not exist!