if your departure airport doesn’t see the flight plan, they won’t let you depart
Excuse me for playing the difficult one again, but I can’t resist: when I prepared for the radio exam, I was told that, when initially calling Tower or even Ground at one’s controlled departure field, stating "VFR to Exxx , y persons on board , &c &c " the operator would tacitly file a flight plan in your place. In other words they only anticipated that no flight plan had yet been filed. But that was perhaps only true at certain fields, and even there it may have changed since. The ubiquitous closing exercise of my radio exam (VFR flight EBAW-EBCI) completely implemented such a scenario. Come to think of it, controlled fields still have a tradition of tacitly closing flight plans after arrival – it is not against reason they should likewise and equally tacitly create and activate them.
I am very sure this doesn’t work in the UK… I have had this many times over the years and had to re-file the missing flight plan.
Of course it will work at a non-towered field 
but at an ATC field they won’t let you go.
It is also bad form to call up the FIS frequency (which might be very busy) and start dictating all the stuff including the colour of the life raft etc.
Obviously I am talking only about instances where a flight plan is a legal requirement, e.g. most border crossing flights. Within a country, a flight plan is often not required (in Europe) though there are great many exceptions to this e.g.
Germany does not require VFR flight plans for flights arriving from / going to a foreign country.
Do you have a source for this? I know it applies for CZ/PL/AT/CH, but always believed a flight plan was still required for VFR flights from Germany from/into FR, BE, NL, LX – not to mention non-neighbour countries such as Italy or Slovakia.
It’s in the german AIP, ENR 1.10. Germany renounces for all flight to or from other Schengen countries. But they can only decide about what they require. The thing is: most “other” countries don’t renounce. For no VFR plan to required however, all the countries involved in the flight need to have renounced.
Ah, thanks Bosco, there’s a gentleman. A rumour goes around that my own country only requires VFR flight plans when flying to/from countries requiring one, so that from BE to/from Germany one would effectively be exempt. I never believed the former part, will have to look into the second bit for myself now…
always believed a flight plan was still required for VFR flights from Germany from/into FR, BE, NL, LX
That is because those countries require a flight plan, not Germany.
The source is an NfL (notices to airmen), I don’t know what the latest one is, they keep extending the list of countries but here’s the one from 2001. I know the Czech Republic has been added since then.
And thanks to you too, Achim. The text is clear enough “Mit Ausnahme der Republik Österreich haben bisher die o. g. Staaten nicht zu erkennen gegeben, dass sie für Flüge nach Sichtflugregeln die gleichen Ausnahmen zugelassen haben.” (except for Austria, the states mentioned have not indicated they have permitted the same exceptions for VFR flights", my translation).
For me it is hard to understand what is discussed here about Flight Plans. Within ten years of flying I have never had a problem with a missing FP. From the beginning I always send the FP both VFR and later IFR via Fax to AIS in Frankfurt which works perfect, even from foreign countries. I remember well my first “long distance” flight VFR from Germany to Croatia which crosses Czech, Austria and Slovenia, there has never been such an issue. Maybe these problems are generated by modern technology ?
No, but pilots from other countries are not in such a comfortable position as we are in Germany. The german AIS does its job quite well and is usually error-free. They also help pilots a lot with the completion of their flightplans, iron out the errors by themselves, etc.
In most other countries, they are much less helpful. In some, they just make lots of mistakes in the addressing process (France?). And in some places (UK) there really is even no such thing as an AIS office anymore and pilots have to do it all by themselves.
The German AIS will not process any flightplans from pilots based outside Germany.
Read PuF’s upcoming October issue… 
Since I had to call Brussels briefing, I made an entry in my directory with each country’s briefing number, however there is just one number in Belgium, one in the UK and 10 numbers in France depending on your departure or arrival airfield.
Fred,
while it is true that there are ten different numbers, one can always call 0810 437 837 (“VFR IFR”) and will then be routed to the correct BRIA.
