English

LUAC - the LEUVENSE Universitaire AERO-CLUB vzw - has two faces: on one hand it's the soaring club of a major Belgian university (the KU Leuven, with over 60,000 students, of which 45,000 in Leuven), but at the same time it is also the "local" gliding club of the city of Leuven. Consequently the club is open to all kinds of members: students (university and non-university), former students, university staff, anyone living around Leuven, or just people who feel good in our group.

Within the Belgian picture of soaring clubs, LUAC is fairly small. Just to give you an idea: approximately 15-20 solo pilots, 7 instructors, 1 two-seater (Twin Astir), 3 single-seaters (Club Astir IIIb, Jeans Astir, Astir CS), a handful of private gliders, 500-700 flight hours annually.

Where do we fly? Unfortunately not around our home town. The vicinity of Brussels airport (EBBR) results in a lot of airspace restrictions (Leuven is at the edge of the CTR and below the TMA), so we can forget about gliding there. The club is based on the airfield of Genk-Zwartberg (EBZW), approximately 70 km east of Leuven. We fly during the weekends and holidays, from March through early October.

Every fall at the start of the academic year we teach for a very modest membership fee an introductory winter course (since 2020 given in English, with slides in Dutch) which is open to anyone. That course does provide essential theoretical background knowledge to those who decide they want to start taking flying lessons in the spring. The course is complemented by simulator training, on a simulator which was built by our own members.

During the flying season we offer a package of 1 flying day with up to two trial flying lessons via the Start-to-Fly membership. We are also an officially approved flying school which offers the full training curriculum for obtaining a glider pilot certificate (the SPL -- Sailplane Pilot License). Note however that our intention is really to just train our own members.

The members with a pilot certificate fly for fun (on their own, or with passengers on the two-seater), to improve their soaring skills (to obtain the various FAI badges), and some also participate in competitions. In addition to the pure flying, the club also holds a couple of "hangar flying" events each year (e.g. barbecue).

The big event each year is the annual summer camp, two or three weeks in the month of July. We then take most of our members and all the gliders to go camping on an airfield abroad. The club has gone many years to the south of France (mountain flying in Vinon and Sisteron), central France (initially Issoudun, the past years Pont-sur-Yonne), a few times to the north of Spain (Monflorite), a number of times to Hungary (Nyíregyháza, Gyöngyös and Őcsény), to Slovenia (Lesce/Bled) and to Germany (Saal). The very intensive flying in that period usually results in about half our annual number of flight hours.

And last but not least, there is all the work that needs to be done to keep the club going. Dues are kept low, but the entire operation is based on members' voluntary unpaid participation in the LUAC "household chores": this includes maintenance and repair of the gliders, trailers, organising events, giving flight instruction, teaching the winter course, doing the administrative work, and so on.

If you are interested in becoming a member, please note the following:

We regularly receive requests for information from foreign students in Leuven who have little or no knowledge of the Dutch language. Unfortunately we have to answer them that all written communication in the club is in Dutch: the website, the club regulations, technical documentation, procedures, theoretical course material, etc. If you are an English-only speaker, this is not an issue while you participate in the Start-to-Fly. However if subsequently you are interested in learning to fly, please note that after the initial phase of flight instruction (which ends with first solo), if you want to continue, it is necessary that you are fully conversant in the Dutch language, at least in terms of reading and understanding it.

The remainder of this website is in Dutch. If you would like any additional information about LUAC in English, please use in-browser translation or contact the club's member administration by telephone.