My normal route back from Guernsey will not validate anymore. I have flow this route 10+ times this year (and fly almost exactly the reverse from Shoreham to Guernsey which still works fine).
The route suits me perfectly as I can fly this all year and not normally worry about icing at this level. It avoids Q41, the Portland Danger Area Complex 36-39 and all controlled airspace until getting to the Channel Islands Zone. It’s also very direct with very little overhead of just 6 percent.
I have found the eurocontrol entry for the error message which seems to want all traffic to now route via NEVIL… But I really don’t want to go this way!
Any help, hacks or suggestions greatly appreciated.
I have found a slight ‘hack’ by going VFR at GWC but it’s not ideal.
See here
That method may well work. The French try to stop it by limiting MAX DCT to 10nm (last time I looked) so file 9nm pieces in France. The UK has a MAX DCT of 100nm below FL100, or something like that. But the VORrrrddd notation gets around Eurocontrol checking.
But why bother? Just cancel IFR at GWC. You have to drop out of CAS to get into Shoreham, sooner or later, so cancelling IFR on the flight plan at GWC is fine. It makes zero difference to your flight. All that happens is that you will get handed from Jersey Control to London Control (for about 37 seconds 
) then to Bournemouth Radar, then to Solent Radar (or some such order) and Solent will dump you when you are over Selsey, which is pretty well at GWC.
I did this not long ago, to get across Switzerland…
In UK Class G, VFR=IFR Once you are out of the Eurocontrol system, there is no service, except some ad hoc bit of radar, “subject to controller workload”, and anyway most of the traffic is invisible on radar. And you have a G-P-S so you don’t need a service anyway And your IFR clearance is gone the moment you enter Class G… you cannot re-enter CAS unless explicitly re-cleared.
So just go along with it, and when you call up Shoreham, and it not great wx, ask for the IAP. They don’t care if you are VFR or IFR as filed. Yesterday I flew the RNAV02 in a 2000ft cloudbase… if the wx is bad they will likely have an approach qualified controller, otherwise probably not.
GULDA G271 BENIX G27 NEVIL
This one will still validate ok. A litte overhead, but not a lot.
That is what Alex found (his comment about routing via NEVIL) but it is a long way round because if you look on a real VFR map you find it cannot be actually flown, due to the prohibited area south of EGKA.
Eurocontrol’s validation of that route is bogus – as is the case in many places in Europe because the country concerned cannot be bothered to supply the airspace details.
You have to fly something like this
Peter wrote:
the prohibited area south of EGKA.
Where’s that on the chart?
EGD36-EGD40. They are danger areas, which are treated more like restricted areas in the UK.
How would ATC in the UK treat Danger or Restricted areas different from e.g. France when flying on an IFR flight plan? As tou file the route more or less around them, would ATC not give you a more direct route if these areas are not active at the moment you actually fly?
These are outside of controlled airspace. No enroute ATC will tell you what to do.
If you determine that the danger area is not active, you can of course fly through, but nobody will clear you through it. If it is active, in some cases you can still get permission (from the agency controlling the DA) to fly through it.
It is a good question whether Eurocontrol should validate DCT legs which are OCAS. Probably not…
FWIW, in my 16 years of flying here, I have never seen those D areas not active. It seems a really obvious case of “declare it active or lose it” so the military keeps them permanently active.
This is a long term issue with Shoreham. It is not near any CAS routes (that validate for any “GA” flight plan) so everybody has to fly long DCTs to reach it, hence all the hacks
