General

Before you fly...

Welcome to Lahr! This small airport primarily hosts cargo flights for the adjacent industrial area, but also sees occasional charter and business jet flights. Additionally, the nearby Europa-Park Rust, a popular theme park, attracts regular traffic. Among VFR pilots, it is a favorite due to its simple airspace structure and airport layout.
Although the airport has a relatively simple layout and low traffic levels on VATSIM, you should still prepare yourself thoroughly to keep it fun for everyone and avoid mistakes which might lead to delays for yourself and other users.

If you are new to VATSIM, Lahr is a perfect airport to get started on the network. Controllers will almost always have enough spare capacity to answer questions or quickly explain a procedure to you. It rarely gets very busy, so making smaller mistakes will usually not have a negative impact on anybody else's experience on the network.

Parking position

All traffic parks at the main apron. There are no dedicated parking positions, but pilots should make sure that the apron taxiway remains free for other traffic.

Lahr is not equipped to handle A380 aircraft. To maintain realism and prevent inconveniences for controllers and other pilots, we ask pilots to choose a different airport when flying the A380.

Handoffs

When instructed to contact another controller, do so as soon as possible. This will avoid you having to stop moving or level off. Please do not hold your position to switch the frequency, keep moving on the ground!

Be aware that some frequencies in use might not be shown in the controller list of your pilot client, so it is important that you listen carefully to what ATC says.

Auto-handoff

Lahr utilizes an auto-handoff procedure for IFR departures where Tower will not hand off outbounds to the approach controller. The current airborne frequency will always be given by the Tower controller.

Contact the airborne frequency immediately when airborne unless explicitly told to remain on Tower frequency.