I got this one
Departing Sunday; no slot needed.
I reckon either a lot of people got in really early, or a lot of slots were “pre-sold” (a bit like the stock market after 9/11).
I can start up at EGKA 0700 UTC so that should be doable even if they have the atrociously arrogant flight plan cancelling procedures in place again, like last year.
Peter_Mundy wrote:
I went online this morning, 8:15 to book a slot for Friday – all gone .
Peter, that’s a bit strange, I just had a look and there were quite a few slots available from 13:40 onwards (UTC). That was for IFR arrivals, I don’t know if it is different for VFR arrivals?
We will arrive Thursday evening. I have a slot for 20h Local time. Earlier was also possible, but I work the night untin Thursday morning and I want to sleep a few hours during the day.
I put my alarm on because last year I had no good slot and at 4h UTC, there were already a lot of places gone, but I had the choice in the hours I wanted.
I also have a slot for Friday morning and Saturday morning (If Thursday or Friday or no VFR weather)
What would happen if you filed EDNY as an alternate and diverted there?
IFR, I would think they would refuse a landing clearance. But VFR it might work.
I will be there without Justine (she is a smart gurl so she is going to Greece 
) so I will be hanging around the exhibition halls, probably…
Anyone who wants to meet up, just email me. I think last time some of us met up at the ADL120 satellite weather stand.
Again, a warning to anyone arriving, as per what happened in 2015: The ATC at EDNY was extremely aggressive and arrogant and issued a SUSPEND (via the Eurocontrol system) on any IFR inbound flight plan whose ETA did not fall inside the booked slot.
This effectively wipes out your flight plan.
So whatever method you use to develop and file your flight plan, you have to tweak your EET and/or your EOBT to hit that slot.
The EuroGA router / Achim’s router / autorouter does not allow the EET to be tweaked. It is fixed in your aircraft perf model. So you have to do a trial routing, get the EET out of it, work out the EOBT from that, file that, re-check the ETA falls within the slot, and depart in accordance with that EOBT.
If you depart late or have to delay or re-file for any reason, your FP is likely to get chucked out by the EDNY “police”.
Someone told me that a Eurocontrol slot will not make EDNY chuck your FP out, however, which is just as well!
I might use EuroFPL to file the FP because they allow the EET to be tweaked. Eurocontrol do validate the EET against their internal perf models for aircraft types but there is a lot of leeway around that – on past experience when I used FlightPlanPro to develop routes, it was about +/- 30%.
I don’t know why EDNY does this but they own the castle and can do what they like. If the exhibition loses a % of arrivals, they couldn’t care less.
I don’t know if EDNY “police” checks VFR FPs. A suspend on a VFR FP would not go far but would get to your departure tower (if it is AFTN connected) and they would refuse a takeoff clearance.
AFKAE wrote:
there were quite a few slots available from 13:40 onwards (UTC). That was for IFR arrivals, I don’t know if it is different for VFR arrivals?
I was only planning to spend one day there – quite enough for me. We are overnighting in Donau Eschingen to avoid the hotel mafia in Friedrichshafn. A 15:40 arrival slot is therefore useless. VFR there was nothing at all, hard or grass. Have now booked a rental car which makes the whole day much more relaxed.
Last year I was pretty much on schedule arriving within slot but a year before I was late on departure from Zagreb and even more late on arrival due to massive headwind and some moderate icing. Nobody canceled my plan so. I’ll try to be precise this year as well but it’s not easy to predict if your EOBT will be appreciated if your’re departing from international airport within their busy hours (Saturday morning at the begining of tourist season).
They don’t cancel once you are airborne.
It is the filed ETA which has to be right.
That basically means you have to get airborne as filed. After that it doesn’t matter. In GA one often arrives an hour late
Peter wrote:
That basically means you have to get airborne as filed.
But I didn’t get airborne as filed – I was late (two years ago). However, from (not only) your case I know it happend, so it can happen again.
