Just returned from a club flyout to Lee on Solent.
When returning to France on Sunday morning, I went up to the tower and was hoping to use their Afpex software to file the flight plans as I had done on previous occasions.
That was when I found out that they had had to cancel their subscription due to the prohibitive fees.
In France, when I want to file a flight plan, I ring up the local planning office, give them the details, and straight into the system it goes.
Anyway, back to Lee – having tried several other online services but with little success – we decided as a last resort to phone the Bordeaux planning office. In 30 seconds the guy on the end of the phone took all the details and then routed it back to the UK for us.
As far as I can see, the only non-telephone solutions for flight plan filing when visiting the UK are :
- Skydemon subscription (you can’t even borrow someone else’s because it is user specific)
- Rocketroute subscription
Afpex is not possible unless you are a UK resident.
Any other options ? Can you file by phone with NATS ?
For VFR (and IFR I believe), EuroFPL is free if you don’t file many flight plans.
For IFR, Autorouter is an excellent alternative!
EuroFPL gives you 10 free flight plans per month, VFR or IFR (no IFR autorouting). That is what I use for VFR. That is also what SD use (I introduced them to each other, years ago 
)
Afpex needs a UK address to set it up. After that, you can be anywhere. Do avoid an address or a user name which looks like a business e.g. “Bordeaux Jim Aviation” because they will then hit you with their billing. That is what they did a while ago, to their entire database.
The Afpex office will (or used to ) accept FPs by fax (I have +44 1489 612793) but they don’t want to advertise it
Both EuroFPL & RocketRoute have free options (limited to a few plans per month).
Afpex will reluctantly accept plans by fax…but expect a moan and them attempting to push you off to someone else.
Are you sure that SD is user specific? That seem highly unlikely, as they must allow you to swap aircraft and PIC details.
Certainly in EasyVFR you can file as many plans as you like and there is no restriction on changing aircraft or PIC.
But the most obvious choice for you is Olivia. Use it for your plans in France, and so long as one end of your flight is in France the plan will be accepted.
If you really want an Afpex account (and there are good reasons for having one) just use a mail forwarding agency (about £10 once off) or a friend with a UK address.
dp
SD is not user specific to file flight plans. You can put any reg and pilot name.
That’s what I thought. More likely that someone didn’t want to let him use their copy of sd as they have to pay for each flight plan submitted.
flying from and to Germany one can call DFS and do it on the phone (for free) no extra call charges
Unfortunately that’s a hugely expensive gold-plated service and one day it will get closed – just like the UK FBUs (flight briefing units) which cost a small fortune and since nearly all commercial operators were filing FPs electronically (back then mostly via US AFTN gateways) they were processing almost only VFR FPs for PPL schools – about 3000 of them per month i.e. 30 per day and they had a large staff doing that. One doesn’t need to be an accountant to see the numbers don’t add up, by a vast margin.
And I am sure DFS is doing the same sort of work, especially today with nearly all private pilots filing electronically too.
The services are serving a small % of pilots who fly abroad very rarely and who have not had the need to sort out FP filing solutions.
LFAT has for a long time had a funny notam
which, translated using my nonexistent French is saying that they don’t provide FP filing services anymore.
just incase someone wants this service +49 69 78072500
And for The Netherlands AIS Schiphol +31 20 406 2315 are always willing to assist
