It is all way more complicated and I don't think I can discuss too much on the forum
It is indeed potentially nontrivial, but Fuzzy's posts confuse the two basic ways of doing it.
For VFR flight plans:
Method 1 is to give the FP to the departure ARO and let them deal with it. This is "ICAO compliant". It works in all places which can and want to do it. The departure ARO then either sends it (usually by fax) to some centralised office where it is fully addressed and injected into the AFTN, or somebody there does the addressing.
Method 2 is to inject it into the AFTN, with the correct addressing for the various airports and FIRs and whatever else. Historically no private pilot could do this, but the UK AFPEX AFTN terminal program does exactly that.
Method 1 is what people have been using for decades, and is all that many people even today know about. It works at all "proper" airports. It even used to work in little places in the UK and they just shoved the bit of paper into a fax machine, to the Heathrow FBU, while doing the radio...
Certain online flight plan filing services have been using Method 1. Homebriefing.com is the original one. Loads of their VFR flight plans used to get lost, especially if you used the DOF/ for a few days ahead. Lately, there has been a big uproar on some UK pilot "Skydemon worship" chat sites that Skydemon flight plans have been going missing, and EuroFPL (who they use) turned out to be doing the same.
I have used EuroFPL for years but never had this problem, but then all my flight plans were IFR which is a totally different thing (they are addressed to two IFPS addresses and that's it).
I have no idea what Rocketroute do with VFR flight plans.
If EuroFPL are now doing full addressing, that is news to me, but it is good news because it is the only thing which IMHO is going to be long term sustainable - because many small airport offices are getting sick of sorting out peoples' VFR flight plans. With staff cuts, nobody wants to do the job. Especially handwritten ones, with barely readable writing, names of villages as waypoints, names of airports as enroute waypoints (=non ICAO compliant) and loads of other errors. This is a big problem in the UK where the FBUs were shut a few years ago and the AFPEX system was rolled out to "fix it for everybody". Now we have a situation where some poor sod at some small grass field is expected to type the damn thing into the AFPEX program while doing the radio.
All IFR flightplans are addressed to Eurocontrol. The same is for composite flightplans, but for the VFR portion some VFR addressing is included. Eurocontrol handles the distribution and delivers to the ARO office the VFR portion.
Most AIPs state exactly how to address the VFR flightplan and where. We are now dealing with some countries like Brazil where it is not stated clearly in their AIP.
One of the exception is the UK where the pilot is assumed to be responsible for addressing themselves one way or the other and not the ARO office. I have heard that the AFPEX program now addresses the VFR flightplans well, but have no experience with it.
Here is a video of how VFR addressing should work:
[video hopefully fixed :) ... NO I give up. This YT video does not deliver a usable embeddable URL. Probably because it is a link to a playlist.]
One of the exception is the UK where the pilot is assumed to be responsible for addressing themselves one way or the other and not the ARO office.
When they closed the UK FBUs they hoped that rolling out AFPEX would fix everything.
But they forgot about a few things...
So now, after the huge huuuhaah, the bigger airports will accept a handwritten flight plan, as per their ICAO "ARO" obligation. There is some debate about whether a given airport has an "ARO". Apparently not every one has.
The smaller ones should also accept it but they don't like it and some will flatly tell you they won't do it.
AFPEX will also accept faxed flight plans (they don't like to talk about that).
I have heard that the AFPEX program now addresses the VFR flightplans well, but have no experience with it.
It does. Why it took them years to incorporate that functionality into the 3 megabytes of Java code, I don't know. But during that time they managed to lose the goodwill of most of UK GA (partly but not wholly unfairly) which in turn supported the business model of all those firms offering easier electronic flight plan filing, and without doubt supporting the sales of flight planning apps which integrate this.
I think AFPEX is a brilliant tool - once you have "resigned yourself" to carrying a windoze laptop, which I always do anyway, and the potential 3MB java app update/download when you are out and about. There are even ways to query others' flight plans, if you know how.
Peter: it is indeed a link to a playlist and not to a video. Sorry about that.
Method 1 is to give the FP to the departure ARO and let them deal with it. This is "ICAO compliant". It works in all places which can and want to do it. The departure ARO then either sends it (usually by fax) to some centralised office where it is fully addressed and injected into the AFTN, or somebody there does the addressing.
Method 2 is to inject it into the AFTN, with the correct addressing for the various airports and FIRs and whatever else. Historically no private pilot could do this, but the UK AFPEX AFTN terminal program does exactly that.
Yes, but it is not an "option". As has been said, you have to do what the AIP of the country of departure tells you to do. AFAIK, UK is one of the few countries which asks for "direct filing", which, as you say, has some workload advantage for the given country's AIS/ARO offices.
Most countries however still ask for and insist on filing VFR flight plans through the AROs, for various reasons. One of them is quality control. Having the AROs as a "filter" improves the quality of the otherwise catastrophic quality of VFR flightplans normally transmitted by sunday-private-pilots. Some time ago, there were two interesting threads about VFR flight plans on one of the "other" places :-). I hope it's OK to link. See here and here.
The people from Eurofpl, Skydemon, Rocketroute etc. have - necessarily - become real experts on this subject in recent years. Other than that, the topic of "VFR flight plans" is still one of the most misunderstood among private pilots. This is mainly because of two things:
Private pilots learn almost nothing about VFR flight plans in their training. In Germany, I would say that maybe 30% of them learn the basics of filling out a flightplan form for a basic (domestic) VFR flight. But 0% are taught how they really work (in the background) and what the term "flight plan addressing" means. No problem...until you fly from a place where you are supposed to adress by yourself.
Across different countries in Europe, the rules for VFR flight plan filing and addressing vary enormously, so it is not possible to make general statements like "VFR FPLs should be addressed to xy and yz". It entirely depends on where you fly from.
One example: In Germany, the FIS does not receive copies of the VFR flightplans. This often puzzles private pilots over here, because they think that filing a flightplan does in some give them "priority" or "special treatment" by ATC. Of course, it doesn't. Some also think that when flying on a VFR flightplan, the pilot is obliged to maintain contact with FIS throughout the flight. All wrong. In Germany, VFR flightplans basically serve only two functions: 1. SAR and 2. (to a certain extent) police/customs. But ATC/FIS has nothing to do with these two. In other countries, (France comes to mind), the FICs do receive those VFR flightplans and therefore usually have all your details once you call them up.
Again, flightplan adressing and the "handling" of VFR flightplans is - nowadays at least - completely a "national" thing.
Yes, but it is not an "option". As has been said, you have to do what the AIP of the country of departure tells you to do. AFAIK, UK is one of the few countries which asks for "direct filing"
My post was from the point of view of a pilot trying to file a flight plan.
He still has those choices - much as the UK tries to pretend it's only either AFPEX or some commercial service.
Having the AROs as a "filter" improves the quality of the otherwise catastrophic quality of VFR flightplans normally transmitted by sunday-private-pilots.
I think that in the long term this will change, once the accountants realise how much this "service for weekend GA" is costing them.
That is what happened in the UK. I don't recall the exact details but I was told by one person in the system that, by the end of their time, the Heathrow and the 1 or 2 other FBUs were processing ~ 3000 flight plans per month, mostly VFR, mostly GA, and many of them filed for no actual flying purpose, by flying schools.
Most of them arrived by fax (from fax machines at airfields) and were hard to read even before correcting the errors.
The contents of the flight plan was basically ignored. You could have routed via any waypoint; a village etc.
There were many people employed just doing this thankless task and I would guess they were on about £40k so about £100k by the time you costed in the overheads. So a total cost of a few million per year, just deciphering and AFTN-addressing mostly VFR GA flight plans. In the European and especially the UK "user pays" system, it was only a matter of time before this was stopped.
So I think France (Olivia) and most other taxpayer funded services will eventually go electronic too.
If EuroFPL are now doing full addressing, that is news to me
It's possible they are doing this. I tried out Skydemon's flight plan filer for the first time this Sunday.
When I got to Gloucester, it turns out they were having some system problems. The person on the front desk called the tower to see if they had my flight plan, and no they didn't - so she called Swanwick who did (and presumably then faxed it to Gloucester).
If the flight plan had only been addressed to EGBJ, then I suspect no one at all would have seen it, and that Swanwick had it indicated it got elsewhere in the system despite the departure aerodrome never having had it.
For VFR flight plans: Method 1 is to give the FP to the departure ARO and let them deal with it. Method 2 is to inject it into the AFTN.
Peter,
I agree with this, but I believe online filing services are using Method 2 instead of Method 1. Using Method 2, the plan is injected into the AFTN and addressed to AROs and/or other interested ATSUs as per the specification in the AIP.
Can I ask a supplementary question pls.
I'm VFR planning Jackrell's Farm (GB) to Reims/Prunay, France, for Customs. Then refill with fuel and fly on to Grenchen, Switzerland (which will have Customs for their Fly-In)
I was going to file both flight plans at home on the p.c. - probably using Olivier - the night before and then initiate them on the wireless first when airborne UK and the second leaving Reims.
Is O.K.?
It'll save hassle and time loss at Reims if I otherwise can't/don't file tomorrow night.
mike hallam
I used to do that (filing them using AFPEX or Olivia beforehand), but I would avoid filing them both up front. You may be delayed. I have probably only been to 8 French airports, but I have have either been able to file them on the ground just before departure, or got a 3G signal to file it on SkyDemon. I appreciate the latter is only do-able if you have the means to do it should the airport facilities unfortunately not be working, but you could try and file one with ATC from the plane on the ground, or once airborne. Just my opinion...
