Hi, this is my first post.
I am a French pilot based in Orleans, 60Nm south of Paris. I have my own plane, a DR-400 (I’m French ;-)) that I share with 2 other pilots.
I love to fly especially cross-border. Whenever I cross a border (the UK, Jersey and Belgium for now), I always have some trouble with my Flight Plan, so I would like to share my experience and see what others have to say.
My recent experiences :
- on my way back from Ostend, I filed my FPL with the French website Olivia for a flight from EGOS to LFOZ. Ostend never received it even though they could see it in Paris and I had to file a new FPL with Brussels and this confusion kept me 2 hours in Ostend
- on my way back from th UK, I filed my FPL on euroFPL, a website claiming to send the FPL to the correct people on time. It was from EGSC to LFOX. They got it OK in both airports but when I crossed the channel, once in France, the contdoller from Lille told me he hadn’t received it, and that I was supposed to include a local airport like Calais in the route for the FPL to reach him.
So what is the best way to file an FPL ?
Thank you for your help, and great website btw
Fred
Bienvenu Frédéric!
VFR flight plans is a never ending story in Europe.
In addition to Olivia and eurofpl, there are also Skydemon and Rocketroute. However, all of them seem to make problems with VFR flight plans occasionally. Often, it is not the fault of these services, but of people involved in the workflow downstream (BRIA/ARO/AIS).
One thing you can do is to use a software which allows users to manually add AFTN addresses and then do all the final addressing yourself (thus precluding any humans from the FPL distribution process). This, however, is not the correct procedure in many countries (it is for flights departing in the UK) and in those cases, it might cause other problems. I go into this subject more in detail
in an article for the german mag “Pilot & Flugzeug”, which will be out in a few days, but since that is in german, it won’t
unfortunately be of much help for you.
Et encore la bienvenue, Frédéric!
“When in Rome, act like the Romans” (many variations available)
When recently flying back home from LFAC Calais, I asked the man behind the counter how to best do it. I was quite certain he was going to point me to an Olivia-enabled PC, but no, he took all the details on a sheet of paper then went off to his own PC – to type them into Olivia himself, like as not, mentally grumbling about how you could never trust a stupid Belgian with such a bit of advanced technology.
Earlier, when flying home from EDKV Dahlemer Binz, I asked the same question and the man behind the counter coolly handed me the phone number to call – and I called that number and got friendly and helpful service from a nice and able person. What more can you want?
I have learned the good side of being able to say “I asked this person and did as I was told”. I feel very reluctant about using any kind of service, over the www or not, that doesn’t feed back the data I remitted. We should not forget all this flight-plan nonsense has very little practical use, at least for VFR, we only do it to be on the legal side. The least we should require is to have proof of that, or at least a strong witness.
[fix link]
I have been using EuroFPL for VFR flight plans and it’s been fine, although I have not used them in N Europe lately.
Note that Skydemon uses EuroFPL…
on my way back from Ostend, I filed my FPL with the French website Olivia for a flight from EGOS to LFOZ. Ostend never received
That seems a really basic (and probably unusual) mistake by Olivia, because absolutely every VFR flight plan gets addressed to the departure and destination airports – in addition to any FIRs etc.
That looks like a nice facility, AchimHa, even if in my “approach” there is no need for it. But I cannot get it to work – does one need to copy the complete flight plan (and if so, in what form? Care to post an example, or is one available somewhere?), or only the “routing” part? It kept complaining about “missing parenthesis”. I will gladly send a screenshot if that helps. BTW how’s about a “Help” button on that page?
absolutely every VFR flight plan gets addressed to the departure and destination airports
I have repeatedly heard incidents on Brussels Information (the FIS for all non-controlled airspace in EBBU FIR) where pilots claimed having filed their flight plan yet the FIS operator could find no trace of it. The wise then simply supply the relevant information – unfortunately I’ve also heard less clever people beginning to argue about how they filed well in advance AND carried a proof of receipt &c &c – as if that helped the poor FIS operator one inch – all the while wasting valuable bandwidth on a busy frequency. If it is not politically incorrect here, I might add that such “less clever” pilots mostly originated slightly northward from here…
Since I had to call Brussels briefing, I made an entry in my directory with each country’s briefing number, however there is just one number in Belgium, one in the UK and 10 numbers in France depending on your departure or arrival airfield.
I would like to cross Luxembourg or Belgium without actually landing there for a flight to Germany, but I guess if Lux control does not receive the FPL, they won’t let me cross !
if Lux control does not receive the FPL, they won’t let me cross !
They almost certainly will – VFR flight plans vanish so often that they cannot be too fussy 
One thing is for sure: if your departure airport doesn’t see the flight plan, they won’t let you depart. But everything else in VFR is “rather fluid”…
One thing (which I have been told by one flight plan filing agency) which can cause a flight plan to disappear from some or all recipients is the use of the DOF/ parameter. Apparently, some software used in the ATC systems cannot handle text strings past a certain length.
Also, VFR flight plans don’t end up in any database from which they would be automatically retrieved on the specified date. The flight plan is delivered (via the AFTN) to all addressed recipients instantly it is filed, and it is up to each recipient to pick it up at the right time. The proverbial nail in the wall has been used to implement this… and often doesn’t work. The exception to the foregoing is when the agency implements the DOF/ parameter internally, and I know some do, and these retain the VFR flight plan in their own database, and send it on the AFTN say 6 hours before EOBT, so the recipients don’t see any DOF/ as such.
Here is an article I wrote a while ago. It needs updating with the EuroGA IFR autorouter but the basic bit is still current. You can search for “VFR flight plans” for example.
One thing is for sure: if your departure airport doesn’t see the flight plan, they won’t let you depart. But everything else in VFR is “rather fluid”…
For VFR? No. You can just depart and open in flight. A departure aerodrome will not care about your flight plan when you’re VFR.
VFR flight plans only serve SAR purposes, this is why they are required. ATC/FIS do not really care about the flight plan, they provide you with the service you request and they are able to deliver.
PS: Germany does not require VFR flight plans for flights arriving from / going to a foreign country. If the other countries doesn’t either (e.g. Czech Republic, Austria and Poland [with some restrictions]), then you don’t need any.
