Yesterday departing from Cherbourg LFRC there was a bit of a delay getting an IFR departure clearance from Deauville and given the trivial flight back to Shoreham I offered ATC to depart VFR. This they did, I got a 7xxx squawk, a handover to Deauville FIS, and then they told me to set 7000 and contact enroute.
The flight plan was “I” and filed for FL050 which meant no service from London Control, but it is an easy option because 5 mins to ditching is no different to 8 mins to ditching, while the latter (say FL080) means one could clip some CAS on the way back during the descent.
Is the original IFR FP cancelled from the system and replaced with a fresh VFR FP (as a DCT presumably), or do they just depart you on the IFR FP but internally (at the French end) do some hack which makes it effectively VFR? The latter would preserve the theoretical possibility of a handover to London Control (which is not possible at FL050 because CAS base is FL075 at the FIR boundary) but those in French ATC who know the UK system will know that isn’t actually going to happen anyway and any IFR clearance will get silently dumped at the UK airspace border, so it makes no difference what they do.
I do this “VFR departure” thing coming back from Le Touquet too, sometimes.
I think that this can not be answered generally, but depends on how flight plans are handled in each individual country.
From a SAR point of view, it shouldn’t make a difference, though. The departure airport should send a DEP message to the destination airport in any case.
In the US, one needs a clearance from ATC to activate an IFR flight plan. It is common practice to depart VFR and to pick up a clearance after airborne when the weather is VFR at the departure airport. There is no flight plan in an active state, IFR or VFR if one departs VFR until the clearance is received, so if you never receive the clearance, there is no departure message generated, no active flight plan of any type, and there is no SAR. Also, in the US, IFR flight plans are only sent to ATC by third party filing systems, so FSS, which handles VFR, simply does not know about the IFR flight plan.
Peter, the AFIS in Cherbourg probably asked Deauville to let you depart VFR.
What really happened between them can only be guessed.
Did you record this flight ?
No recording; sorry 
It is common practice to depart VFR and to pick up a clearance after airborne when the weather is VFR at the departure airport.
I suppose it is possible this was just a VFR departure on the original (IFR) flight plan i.e. the system still works if you do that. However I wouldn’t know if the original FP had been cancelled (and replaced) because I don’t have access to the AFTN or Eurocontrol system (only ATC etc have that), and the Autorouter wouldn’t know about it either.
On a similar note, I find that when I leave Rochester on an ‘Z’ or an ‘I’ plan I get exactly the same instructions i.e. “Remain outside controlled airspace below 3000’; Squawk XXXX; Next frequency 1xx.xx”.
In the U.K., Do they diffentiate?
Check your track on Autorouter.
Once I filed Z and never picked up IFR, went all the way VFR and the track still showed up on Autorouter, which means the Z flightplan was activated at least.
What a good idea! This is what AR shows for the IFR FP on which I did a VFR departure:
No tracking info from Eurocontrol is showing (would be in black).
And funnily enough, this is the outbound flight earlier that day, which being filed at 5000ft didn’t get a service from London Control so again no tracking
So these flight plans seem to be totally inactive as far as Eurocontrol is concerned – despite the fact that all “I” FPs go to IFPS and from there get distributed to the various countries. If you depart the UK without a service from LC then even if you get the Eurocontrol squawk at the boundary with France it is still operated wholly outside Eurocontrol. On this flight I got a full IFR clearance from LFRG and (AFAICT) the Eurocontrol squawk I should have had and still nothing
Hi Peter
Interesting facts.
Maybe it’s better to do a “visual” departure. The term “VFR” includes a change of flight rules and so the situation could have arisen.
Best regards Jan
I looked further back and found one LFAT-EGKA on which I did the formal LYD1Y IFR departure. And sure enough we see the Eurocontrol tracking here
The first part of the filed route LFAT-LYD isn’t being plotted due to this weird error (I am re-opening an old FP)
Anyway, this is how it should work. At the point of departure the “system” doesn’t know that the UK ATC (London Control) has tossed the FP in the bin already, so it plots the radar returns, up to the handover point.
