Today, twenty-six aircraft depart on a European flying expedition that does something increasingly rare in modern travel: it takes its time. Fifteen days, ten countries, thousands of small human contacts along the way.

At 11:00 CEST this morning, at Luxembourg-Findel Airport, nine aircraft take off in front of institutional partners and the media to mark the official launch of the Private Pilot Expedition to Georgia 2026. Along the route, other European crews will join the formation from their home bases. By the time the group is complete, twenty-six aircraft — flown by pilots from ten countries — will be en route towards the Caucasus.

The philosophy behind the expedition

Modern European travel has become extraordinarily efficient. A flight from Luxembourg to Tbilisi takes a matter of hours, from door to door barely half a day. That efficiency is a genuine achievement, and it has made European aviation a mass-market product. But it has also had a side effect: passengers pass over the countries between departure and arrival almost invisibly. The landscapes below, the cities not visited, the people not met — all disappear into the background of the journey.

Private aviation, done well, does the opposite. It takes time. It requires pilots to plan routes personally, to coordinate with local airfields, to speak directly with air traffic services, to make border formalities work at every stop. It requires overnight stays, hotel dinners, morning coffees, casual conversations with fuel operators and airport officials. It reduces the invisible distance between countries by turning each stop into a small, real place.

Schengen in the air

Peter Sodermans, who conceived and organised the expedition, has described the underlying idea as “Schengen in the air” — the notion that private aviation can put into practice, in a very concrete way, the openness and cross-border freedom that Europe has spent decades building on the ground.

The choice of Georgia as destination extends that idea beyond the Schengen area geographically. Georgia holds EU candidate status and is deeply engaged in its European integration path. Flying to Kakheti in the way this expedition is doing it — as a European group of private aircraft welcomed by Georgian institutions and communities — is a concrete expression of the openness that the European project, at its best, is meant to enable.

The countries in between

Between Luxembourg and Georgia, the group will pass through Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, Türkiye and back through Greece, Italy and France. Each of those stops is a genuine encounter — with the airfield, its people, the town beyond, and the country in miniature. Over the fifteen days of the expedition, the twenty-six crews will collectively spend dozens of hours in situations that no commercial airline passenger ever experiences: mid-morning coffees at Hungarian airfields, evening meals in Turkish coastal towns, wine-region dinners in Kakheti, farewell drinks in southern France.

Each of those situations is a small connection made — between people who would otherwise never have met. Multiplied across twenty-six crews and fifteen days, the total volume of new human contact created by this expedition is substantial. That, more than the flying itself, is what makes it a genuine European undertaking.

What today’s take-off means

Today’s ceremony at Luxembourg-Findel is more than a formal launch. It is the moment at which an idea developed over the past year turns into practical action — and at which the connections that this expedition is designed to build begin to happen, one stop at a time, one conversation at a time, across a continent.

Safe onwards to the twenty-six crews — and to Georgia, ready to welcome them.

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Follow the expedition day-by-day at expedition.privatepilot.lu.