A friend was stuck for two hours today because of flight plan issues.
The FPL was filed via RocketRoute and he received an ACK on it.
But ATC could not open his IFR flightplan and told him that it contained an error.
He told me that there were other pilots that filed via RR and had the same issue.
He forwarded me his FPL. I’ve marked in bold the part that caused problems.
Do you know what’s wrong here?
The FPL:
(FPL-PHFLD-ZG -DA40/L-SDFGRY/S -EHLE1130 -N0120F050 N0115VFR ARNEM/N0115F080 IFR L620 SONEB Z841 DOMEG DCT KULIX DCT UVANO DCT ARNIX DCT KOMIB T193 ERTES DCT 4953N01043E DCT KEMES DCT HFX DCT MAMOR DCT BIBAG T700 BADIT/N0115F050 T700 SBG DCT -LOWS0314 LOWL -PBN/A1B2S1 DOF/150829 EET/ARNEM0016 EDGG0026 EDMM0200 LOVV0303 EDMM0309 LOVV0313 RMK/FILED BY +441273782130 CREW CONTACT +3112345678)
The FPL validates OK both with and without the N0115VFR field.
As far as I’m aware, the term VFR is only acceptable for uncontrolled VFR flight plans, not IFR – at least that was what was taught to me…. obviously I’ll bow to those with more knowledge than I have……
Edit: thinking about, it could also be that you have indicated a change in airspeed and altitude without giving a location where that change will take place?
4953N01043E
Are such long lat waypoints allowed in European airspace? I assumed this was allowed in oceanic airspace only…
Yes the plan is syntactically incorrect, it has two speed groups back to back. Eurocontrol lets this pass as they don’t care about the VFR part.
Thanks. I don’t have a RocketRoute account anymore but it seems like they have a bug which affects all Z flightplans.
Are such long lat waypoints allowed in European airspace? I assumed this was allowed in oceanic airspace only…
Yes, any of the ICAO formats can be used to describe a route
Eurocontrol accepts lat/long and the NATS narrow route briefing site does too, but I think it’s correct to say that an airway route which is being submitted for validation has to use named waypoints between airway names e.g. L123 SFD L345 would not work if SFD was specified as lat/long. Possibly because (almost) no two floating point numbers will be exactly equal 
This trick (see the 2nd image) could have been done using lat/long instead of the VORrrrddd method.
What remains unclear is which (if any) ATC unit has the capability to see such routes displayed on their terminals. I tried to find out some years ago on some ATC forum but did not get any meaningful replies.
Peter wrote:
What remains unclear is which (if any) ATC unit has the capability to see such routes displayed on their terminals.
Given that NATS cannot even import a normal flight plan with level changes, the answer likely is: none.
Normally the ATCO only sees entry and exit points to and out of his sector, and normally he doesn’t need to know more, except eg. on your flight back from Sturup 
What remains unclear is which (if any) ATC unit has the capability to see such routes displayed on their terminals. I tried to find out some years ago on some ATC forum but did not get any meaningful replies.
I asked Dublin ATC the same question a few months ago, they the question was about VFR flight plans. They can’t see the route plotted out (just the details from your flight plan) on their screens, irrespective of how you specify the route.
