Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
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By James Chan
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1867302
Lefty, after departure, have you considered (weather permitting) flying towards the direction of neighbouring aerodromes that do have pre-planned airways joining routes or SIDs? And then look to join from there? I would hope they'd be able to deal with you in the same way a departure would from that aerodrome.
Last edited by James Chan on Thu Aug 26, 2021 9:14 am, edited 2 times in total.
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By JonathanB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1867304
Chilli Monster wrote:You’ll probably find that Doncaster found your plan by phoning the relevant airways sector, who would have had your plan details even if London info couldn’t find it.


Unlikely as London Info are on the same system as the en-route sectors. More likely that London Info were too busy to call Flight Plans and get it sorted, but Doncaster did have time.
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By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1867308
Departing from an airfield in the middle of nowhere on countless IFR plans over the last ten years I’ve never once had London Info fail to locate one, and always been cleared into CAS at my planned point.

Have I just been exceptionally lucky?
#1867310
James Chan wrote:neighbouring aerodromes that do have pre-planned airways joining routes or SIDs

Good call. They used to be listed as PDARs (Preferred Departure and Arrival Routes), I don't know if they still are. Also, telephoning Terminal Control on the ground to request an 'airways' squawk and frequency usually does the trick, saves miles of high-workload, low-level scud running.
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By 2Donkeys
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1867316
GrahamB wrote:Departing from an airfield in the middle of nowhere on countless IFR plans over the last ten years I’ve never once had London Info fail to locate one, and always been cleared into CAS at my planned point.

Have I just been exceptionally lucky?



Likewise. I don't recognise the problem being described here. Operating off a ZZZZ private strip with no established IFR routings, I have not once had an issue with picking up my IFR join from London Info.
#1867334
Lefty wrote:..
Call me cynical, but since light GA doesn’t (generally) pay EnRoute airways charges, it is not surprising that NATS doesn’t afford us the same level of support as they offer to light business aviation and CAT.


since you ask, 'you're cynical' :wink: .. but is such a practice compatible with whatever Service Level Agreement NATS as a company has with DfT or CAA as a regulator ? Is there no 'equitable treatment of all airspace users' phrase in the contract ?

I realise it's unreasonable to expect @Lefty to know the answer; I merely reflect that I cannot imagine, in US, FAA ATC facilities and staff treating light GA any less helpfully than a bizjet or airliner over proper handling of FPLs.
#1867347
Lefty wrote:Which airfield ?
I suspect either Fairoaks, Denham or Stapleford, all of which have quite a lot of IFR traffic and thus NATS has Pre planned airways joining routes.

NATS operates pre planned routes for IFR departures from Blackbushe, Fairoaks, Dunsfold, Lasham and Odiham as well as from Farnborough (I'd like to have included White Waltham as well when we planned it but it never happened)
The co-ordinator has strips for all these on i 'pending' board so that, when any of these airfields phones for a departure release, they are given a squawk and a contact frequency and told they are 'released (for departure) via ' and subsequently are contacted by the Farnborough departures controller for this release. As soon as the transponder code appears on radar displays, the flight plan is automatically activated.
#1867357
London Info (FIS) should be able to fetch any I-FPL, even ZZZZ DCT ZZZZ at A030, say 80nm of direct at 3000ft IFR grass to grass) reasonably around it’s EBOT time, the only reason why they could not fetch it: it was filed 3 days ago or it’s using the wrong registration :lol:

Now if they can get you an en-route join before you land is a different matter, especially when they are talking to half of the country on a sunny day

Other units the result is not 100% guaranteed
#1867380
Chilli Monster wrote:Most of these units use Copperchase Flight Plan Processing, which will produce a transit strip with your details on.


Do they do that these days? The system we had at Luton, and I am talking 20 odd years ago and when we had a functioning APP unit, was programmed only to print strips if the arrival or departure airfield was Luton (or Hatfield). Everything else was ignored. The ATSA might notice a FPL amongst the other AFTN messages but we didn't do anything with it. If the aircraft called we just dealt with it as a normal transit.
#1867395
simoon wrote:The other day, I filed an airways flight plan then departed a farm strip, called London Info but they could not find the flight plan and suggested I called Doncaster (the nearest atc) who, after a little while, got me a squawk, gave me a clearance before putting me on to Scottish Control - many thanks allround :D

But it got me thinking ....what actually happened, did Doncaster manage to find my original flight plan (despite London Info not being able to) or did they just create one on the spot ? if so all they knew about me was callsign and my destination they didnt even ask the a/c type.

Any Ideas ? :D


If you wanted to try and contact the flight plan folk to see if they can tell you what any issues may have been, their contact details in theory are...

Image
#1867403
vintage ATCO wrote:
Chilli Monster wrote:Most of these units use Copperchase Flight Plan Processing, which will produce a transit strip with your details on.


Do they do that these days? The system we had at Luton, and I am talking 20 odd years ago and when we had a functioning APP unit, was programmed only to print strips if the arrival or departure airfield was Luton (or Hatfield). Everything else was ignored. The ATSA might notice a FPL amongst the other AFTN messages but we didn't do anything with it. If the aircraft called we just dealt with it as a normal transit.

Certainly did for Farnborough; Copperchase was programmed to produce strips for all 6 airfields.