A slight detour south of London

Clearly it still deletes the tracks after a few days.

Hmm, but not oldest first. A flight at the weekend is there, but not yesterday’s jaunt. (Mode S is always on). And the part that is recorded is only that while talking to Brize zone. How can they know that? Also, the track line is suspiciously straight for my cack handed VFR flying.

All very interesting, nonetheless. Thanks for pointing it out.

Good timing. EASA RMT.0573 on “fuel procedures and planning” is about to start. Can I use this example please?

How should a pilot unfamiliar with the airspace know that a significant detour is to be expected?
The filed route EGBJ N0144F090 MALBY L9 KONAN EBOS is a perfectly fine airway route, not something hacked around with DCTs which would potentially get you in restricted areas.

If I plan a route via airways, I expect I can fly it more or less as filed. If you’re lucky you get some shortcuts, but a major detour by ATC is not something I prepare for.
Just like ATC also expects me to stick to the plan: I’ve had situations where I was on a avoidance heading to circumvent some weather and ATC was pushing me to return to the filed route.

Last year when flying EHLE-LOWS on our way to the 2014 Mali Losinj flyin, I got a “PH-PCA, are you ready to copy your new routing?”
The new route included a major dogleg via some waypoint at the Czech border. I thought I would get a DCT sooner or later, but when I start inquiring, they told me that the next sector could not accept me. The detour added about 40 min of flight time.

When discussing this situation with Achimha at the flyin, he suggested that I should have just replied: “Unable to comply due to fuel reserves”.
Flying IFR in a small aircraft in Europe has a very positive effect on your character-building skills :-)

How long before EOBT was that flight plan filed?

Sometimes you get a military exercise.

But sometimes one does just get crazy re-routings.

One solution can come in the form of a solid wall of TCUs which force you to ask for a heading “to avoid” and the heading happens to be where you want to go I am not for a moment suggesting the wx is not real… but if you have a choice between asking for a left or right to avoid something big sticking up, obviously you should pick the one which gives you a useful shortcut, especially as the vis may be only say 50nm and after 50nm there could be more of the same.

Flying IFR in a small aircraft in Europe has a very positive effect on your character-building skills

One could call it “keeping the decisionmaking in the cockpit” There have been too many cases of ATC (unwittingly) pushing a pilot to do this and that and eventually he ran out of options. Most pilots leave training with a real fear of ATC.

When asking for headings to avoid in Spain (which coincidentally did result in a shortcut), I have heard ATC call up in Spanish to other aircraft to ask if there really was weather there!

When asking for headings to avoid in Spain (which coincidentally did result in a shortcut), I have heard ATC call up in Spanish to other aircraft to ask if there really was weather there!

For you at FL300+ that tactic may well work. But they will be hard pushed to get a report on what is sitting at say FL100-150.

Quite cunning all the same

When asking for headings to avoid in Spain (which coincidentally did result in a shortcut)

Yes, I am also very much surprised how on my cleared dogleg the weather is so often bad and on a direct course it is perfect

The further south you go, the more often ATC send you on detours not because there is some hard requirement but because they are lazy and don’t care about about you.

Completely off-topic question, but do the radar scopes in Europe give controllers a view of the primary radar returns from precipitation?

My impression from a recent flight is no… we were abeam a line of TCUs, with what looked like a lot of rain falling out, but the controller asked several times whether we could resume our route yet.