But it’s sometimes difficult to make any jokes here.
I do not understand that comment at all. EuroGA is a very polite and helpful forum.
The key is to use a smiley 
Then everybody can see you are joking. If you say something ironic and don’t use a smiley, it can be misunderstood because irony does not travel well over the internet.
Is it possible that Autorouter validates and files a route that’s below the MEA? I think that’s happened to me this summer, but I haven’t kept the details (was trying to run away from TS)
Sorry, Peter – as much as i have learned to appreciate the many qualities of this forum – i would not want to be THAT much politically correct that i have to put a smiley behind every joke.
:-)
It is absolutely possible to get Eurocontrol to validate a route below the MEA. I am sure you can route in Class G through Snowdonia at 1000ft.
There will never be a tool which deals with this – for many reasons, one of which is that the rules which London Control / Scottish Control use to decide whether to throw out a flight plan are not public.
But if you mean below the airway MEAs, sure. It is not possible to generate an IFR flight plan for any Class G airport without flying below some airway MEA – because OCAS airports do not join up with any airway. And when flying enroute, any Class G portion will be below some airway MEA – because there are no airways in Class G.
Is it possible that Autorouter validates and files a route that’s below the MEA?
There are no MEAs on DCT routes… If you try filing an airway below the MEA, it will be rejected.
i would not want to be THAT much politically correct that i have to put a smiley behind every joke.
Well, if you are talking to people face to face, it’s obvious. If you are on the internet, it will be obvious to the regulars. But if you want a joke to be obvious to people who
then you do need to use a smiley.
Hi Rob, your question is very valid and I would say that it depends on where you fly.
In the UK, when filing DCT’s you might end up in uncontrolled airspace and you’ll be on your own.
So you might want to use the “Generally Discourage Directs” feature there.
In most other countries you can file DCT’s and ATC will guide you through.
Avoiding DCT’s will result in routes which ATC will understand. And they will usually offer a shortcut if available.
Sometimes you can file a DCT directly from an enroute waypoint to your destination.
As a best practice I learned to always file a STAR and load it in the GPS. See the mistake I did earlier this year here.
I agree with the idea in the above post. ATC will, from my experience, look after you very well. In terms of a route, the job is to avoid filing one that is so unusual that you make it hard for them to look after you.
DCTs are perfectly OK. If you refer to the UK SRD (Standard routes document), IFR routes in and out of UK airspace and from UK airports in and out of UK airspace are all documented. There are hundreds of them – and most (nearly all?) of them have DCTs.
In terms of going from Turweston to Dinard, I would recommend a route via SAM Q41 ORTAC and the Channel Islands zone. A well-trodden route, you will be looked after well and you have the flexibility of having some lower levels whilst remaining in controlled airspace.
Have a great trip!
When I filed airways I found Austro control a great service – once you filed your preferred route and ticked the changes accepted box, it would typically come back in a pragmatic form. I had the impression that the troubleshooting might actually be a nice Austrian human, and not the Brussels computer.
In practice, if you are away from the large metro TMAs (London, Paris, Amsterdam) usual ATC practice, once established at a workable flight level, is to clear you direct own navigation pretty well all the way down to the next FIR boundary or closest to boundary waypoint.
The Acme FTOs have an objective, not dissimilar to the services, of ensuring your instrument scan and flying skills and situational awareness are to an acceptable base level. The 45 or 55 hours it takes is quite modest compared to old school military training on gauges. It is fair they are less good at line training in real IFR, but assume you will have a conservative risk appetite and carry out your own ‘line training’ in a measured way.
denopa wrote:
Is it possible that Autorouter validates and files a route that’s below the MEA?
For manually modified routes, that is possible; we do not check terrain on manually modified routes.
For autorouted flight plans, we check DCT legs against the SRTM DEM. We check 5 miles on either side of the center line.
In my opinion airways are a thing of the past, they solve a problem that no longer exists, thanks to area navigation, especially GNSS.
Changing airways is a tedious, multi-year process as it needs to be coordinated with Regional Air Navigation (RAN) Meetings. It seems like ANSP are increasingly avoiding this route, and instead fix issues of the airway network by introducing more DCTs.
There is considerable political pressure for more direct routes to save fuel and emissions. A key tool to achieve this are free route airspaces. Many ANSP at least have plans for FRA. Some ANSP are less enthusiastic, but I doubt they will be able to withstand the pressure in the long run.
So there is nothing dirty about DCT, to the contrary, it’s the future.
