achimha wrote:
Even a fairly competent ARO like in Germany uses a combination of hand written lists and personal experience to try to do the addressing to the best of their knowledge. Those lists are neither always correct nor up to date.
I had a chat with German AIS office a few months back and they had some issues with their ‘lists’.
Basically you have to read AIP Enroute section 1.11 of every country you cross and see their addressing.
EuroFPL is doing it wrong. I had wrong addressed SD flight plans as well.
mdoerr wrote:
Basically you have to read AIP Enroute section 1.11 of every country you cross and see their addressing.
It’s even more complex than that. For our implementation, we went through all AIP ENR 1.11 and translated the content into our own programming language. Then we setup a tool that checks all AIPs every day for updates and alerts us about changes. For the AIPs not managed by Eurocontrol EAD this requires additional manual work.
On top of the AIPs, you also have to consider AMDTs and NOTAMs. Addressing rules can be changed outside the AIP by either means. Highly annoying.
So when will you start supporting the filing of Victor flightplans?
achimha wrote:
If I fly VFR from Albania to the UK, you honestly think that the ARO in Albania is qualified to figure out the addressing?
well, they should know. or send it to someone in UK who should know. I know there is someone at LKAA who is manually distributing VFR flight plans accordingly. But sooner or later they will be gone autorouter needs to support also V flight plans ;-) and hopefully there will be a general guidance from above…
The most common scenario is that FP addressing is the responsibility of the departure ARO.
For example, for years and possibly still today, Homebriefing.com (the earliest and still going internet FP filing service) did no more with VFR FPs – they just forwarded them to the airport of departure! (they told me this is what they do). That discharged their obligation.
Often that causes havoc and many FPs I filed via HB just vanished. I recall one trip EGKA-LEAX via LFBZ on which all four vanished. At one of these in particular, the “ARO” was a memorable lady whose mind was, shall we say, on other matters 
And today an internet FP filing service could just do that… it will work if the departure airport is a sizeable one which is outside the UK. I would be amazed however if it worked at LATI but you never know; their ATC has always been totally competent on the many times I flew over Albania.
It gets more complicated e.g. VFR FPs sent to Brac LDSB (i.e. LDSBZTZX) are actually diverted to Split LDSP (LDSPZTZX) and they fax the FP to Brac so Brac knows you are coming
Michal wrote:
well, they should know. or send it to someone in UK who should know.
Albania UK was just an example for a flight crossing multiple countries. I have nothing negative to report about Albanian ATC
No way that an ARO can do this reliably. The rules are way too involved. There are many airspace dependent rules so the exact route matters and the intrinsics of each country’s AIP. If they end up contacting every transit country, a flight plan becomes a full day job. So in reality they just put in a few addresses they somehow know (usually from a sheet of paper pinned to their office wall), hoping it will work.
boscomantico wrote:
So when will you start supporting the filing of Victor flightplans?
It is planned but no date yet. The beauty of IFR is that you talk to a computer with a well designed interface (Eurocontrol). With VFR, you end up sending messages to a lot of human operators and they might actually respond which you have to process manually. Even if you do your job well, there will be a combination of incorrect addressing (because it is very difficult like I described above) and mistakes on the receivers’ side so you get user complaints which take a lot of time to process.
There are many airspace dependent rules
But, surely, making sure the route is flyable, legally and otherwise, is 100.000% the responsibility of the pilot.
It has always been 100% legal to file a VFR FP from Shoreham to Southend, via Kathmandu, nonstop, in a C150, at FL200.
so you get user complaints which take a lot of time to process
Yes – which leaves the business with two options
I meant the required flight plan addressing depends on the airspaces crossed. There is no simple “one country, one address” rule.
WarleyAir wrote:
ARO = Airport Reservation Office or Airport Reporting Officer ????
Sorry. “ATS Reporting Office”, or simply “briefing”.
Peter wrote:
These extra addresses are supposed to be added automatically by the tool used to file the VFR FP.Traditionally, in VFR FP addressing, you address the FP to
departure airport destination airport each FIR which you are crossingI have some background here
But there are many variations between countries.
Yes there are, for example in Greece all VFR FPLs are copied to a MIL unit that oversees all traffic in LGGG airspace whereby they have to correlate and positively identify and follow up (usually with MIL radar network or via comm’s with affected airport towers) each single flight even if flying at 50Kts and 1000ft with a squawk 7000 or even a primary radar contact only without transponder emission. This unit never communicates with pilots, only with local CIV ATC units and its on a “National Security” basis issue due to our sea border to the east …
IFR flights for them is a no brainer and no identification process is done for them but any other target unless positively identified initiates an interception procedure.
So these guys get copied the VFR FPLs too since they demand them anyway (but pilots are not involved in this).
VFR FPLs in Greece are mandatory even for the traffic pattern :-0
Another example is Athens TMA and the Z/Y/I flight plans from the two GA non instrument procedures airports (LGMG & LGTT). LGAV APP and TMA dedicated FIC are also copied since they handle these flights first for the IFR pick up. Because they belong to LGAV (AFTN wise) unless specified in recipients they will not be copied.
All this I explained to the EuroFPL team here some time ago and they implemented it soon after.
