So this happened yesterday:
Had a VFR inbound slot in Zürich (no IFR slots available for many hours, so didn’t really have a choice). Departed from a VFR only airfield but wanted to fly IFR en-route. So I created a fpl/route in autorouter respectively as follows
The filed flight plan was a “Z” flight plan: FPL-[…]-ZG […] TIBER/N0172F160 IFR L995 CANNE VFR LSGL
I have manually added “VFR LSGL” instead of the autorouter suggestion of “Z651 KELIP KELIP2G LSZH” as suggested by autorouter, to make it a “VFR arrival”.
Btw: I now realize it should have said “VFR LSGL LSZH”, so including the destination LSZH. I added the detour to LSGL to artificially prolong the flight in order to make the slot time match. The missing LSZH part was apparently not the problem though.
Since it was accepted by Eurocontrol/Autorouter, I thought I was fine.
The problem created by this is that autorouter filed it as a Zulu flight plan, so when I arrived in Zürich, they couldn’t find a corresponding IFR inbound slot and complained about it.
Filing a Yankee flight plan would have satisfied Zürich, but of course I cannot depart IFR from a VFR only field. Seems like we would need a 5th flight plan code, apart from I V Z Y
Is there any elegant way to solve this? The most elegant we could come up with so far is to make a comment in the RMK section of the flight plan indicating that it will be a VFR arrival and slot has been booked.
Why not file a Y flight plan and to pick up IFR from an IFR waypoint/intersection?
ATS are therefore not interested in the flight up to opening your flight plan atnthis intersection.
I comment on your points in a slightly different order.
HBadger wrote:
The problem created by this is that autorouter filed it as a Zulu flight plan, so when I arrived in Zürich, they couldn’t find a corresponding IFR inbound slot and complained about it.Filing a Yankee flight plan would have satisfied Zürich, but of course I cannot depart IFR from a VFR only field. Seems like we would need a 5th flight plan code, apart from I V Z Y
A Z flight plan should be quite ok. Z does not mean “take off VFR, land IFR”, it means “flight rules changes, start with VFR”. Similarly, Y means “flight rules changes, start with IFR”. Om both kinds of flight plans, you can change back and forth between VFR and IFR any number of times. In this case you wrote that you would change to VFR at CANNE, so Zürich should have expected you VFR.
Btw: I now realize it should have said “VFR LSGL LSZH”, so including the destination LSZH.
I don’t think you should. You have stated that LSZH was your destination so it should not be in the route part. (Formally, you can’t have airports such as LSGL in the route part but many countries accept it anyway.)
Since it was accepted by Eurocontrol/Autorouter, I thought I was fine.
Eurocontrol does not verify the VFR part(s) of Y and Z flight plans, only the IFR part(s).
The problem created by this is that autorouter filed it as a Zulu flight plan,
A Zulu flight plan was the appropriate one, so Autorouter did right.
so when I arrived in Zürich, they couldn’t find a corresponding IFR inbound slot and complained about it.
You should have been VFR when you arrived in Zürich so how did that happen? Didn’t you cancel IFR at CANNE?
Why not file it as Y-FPL (or I-FPL) from a nearby IFR airport: depart VFR, pick IFR en-route and cancel IFR for arrival?
PS: I am not aware of ATC procedures in Switzerland but at least in Geneva they seem accomodating on rule changes or joining the nearby departure, I called them once for departure from Annemasse and their suggestion worked nicely (the only glitch my departure looked like it requires customs at Toussus 
)
HBadger wrote:
Is there any elegant way to solve this? The most elegant we could come up with so far is to make a comment in the RMK section of the flight plan indicating that it will be a VFR arrival and slot has been booked.
I guess that is the only way. However, what counts should be how you did arrive in ZRH. If you landed VFR, then what is the complaint about?
Pity that these things can’t be resolved anymore quick and easy at the GAC counter…. as it doesn’t exist anymore.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I guess that is the only way. However, what counts should be how you did arrive in ZRH. If you landed VFR, then what is the complaint about?
But I still don’t understand. CANNE is 80 NM from LSZH. Did you cancel IFR at CANNE? When did you get the complaint about the slot and by whom?
On FF you can nominate your IFR VFR transitions and As long as Eurocontrol validate the z route with an IFR at arrival it always lets me manually insert VFR prior so I assume AR is capable of doing similar?
Airborne_Again wrote:
But I still don’t understand. CANNE is 80 NM from LSZH. Did you cancel IFR at CANNE? When did you get the complaint about the slot and by whom?
The question is put to @HBadger, of course. Sorry.
I did cancel IFR, not at CANNE but a bit later due to weather (that extension was coordinated in flight and no problem at all). So I arrived VFR as indicated in the flight plan.
Apparently the issue was as follows (from what I could gather from talking to the Apron management after the flight):
It was coded as Z, therefore they expected me to have an inbound IFR slot. They looked it up in their system but I didn’t have a corresponding slot. The VFR slot management is on a separate IT system and apparently they didn’t check that system for some time, until they finally figured it out. Once the slot question was clear, I think they had some manual work to do to carry over details from the IFR flight plan into the VFR slot system.
The flight itself was completely as I expected it, I only got to know about the issue after I landed and was contacted by handling.
HBadger wrote:
Apparently the issue was as follows (from what I could gather from talking to the Apron management after the flight):
It was coded as Z, therefore they expected me to have an inbound IFR slot.
Then the problem was that they don’t understand what “Z” means… I don’t see what you could have done differently.
