If you file a Z/Y flightplan, the VFR part of the flightplan is not validated by the IFPS/CFMU system at all. In fact, Eurocontrol wants to receive the VFR addressing part from you as you file the flightplan. In AeroPlus, we add that VFR part, plus the FIR boundary crossing and their names and estimates (based on flightplan route and filed altitudes and winds aloft forecasts (GFS)) automatically. In some instances enroute stations during a day VFR flight or portion of the flight needs to be addressed to station A, B and C while at night another address needs to be added. All the information is in the AIP’s but Eurocontrol does not have a system to auto-address this. We do and by correctly addressing the VFR portion, we hand over this information in the Y/Z flightplan to Eurocontrol, which simply takes over that part of the addressing as we deliver it to them.
That’s funny… when I started using Homebriefing.com I had my local ATC ask how come the flight plan was being sent to them from Austria.
Now they are well used to that sort of thing.
Unfortunately the AFTN system is open to abuse, but dumping a flight plan like that is outrageous. The silly man could have checked it by telephoning the departure airport and asking if the plane is parked there, etc. I hope this was a long time ago, otherwise we can forget about online filing altogether.
I vaguely recall that the way you deal with VFR addressing varies per the national AIP. Some want it sent to the departure ARO (and I suppose faxing is good as it protects jobs of people decoding and re-entering the information – there was a lot of resistance to UK’s closure of the FBUs which were processing about 3000 FPs a month, mostly faxed) and some want it addressed to various addresses.
But none of this relates to Eurocontrol, unless you are filing Z or Y and then I can’t see it matters because the VFR legs are going to be very short, and will be terminating at one of the airports, who will get the FP from Eurocontrol anyway.
I am sure Eurocontrol distribute the FP to both airports – even given that on Z or Y one will be a VFR one. Apparently, if you file a Z or Y and use the “IFPS validation only” mode (to see if it will validate, etc) the VFR portions do actually get transmitted to the airport(s) and you need to contact the airport(s) to cancel them yourself.
However some online flight plan filing services discharge their obligation simply by sending the FP to the departure ARO, which would do the required job – unless it is physically necessary for the pilot to visit the tower. Homebriefing.com told me they do that (for VFR flight plans) and I am fairly sure I was using them in 2005, and I don’t recall any problems.
Faxing directly to the ARO is an alternative and it should work, but to me the problem is that I need feedback. VFR flight plans are not handled the same as the eurocontrolled ones. When flying over 300NM of water I want to make sure that the flight plan is correctly addressed and filed to the appropriate units. It is not the first time and certainly not the last that faxed VFR flight plans get lost or trashed. I once departed from LFKB using EuroFPL for the FPL filing. I requested start-up but the tower informed me that he did not have my flight plan in the system. I called the French FPL hotline for the Marseille region and the guy simply told me on the phone that he trashed my flight plan because it was from a weird AFTN address. He couldn’t understand that a flight plan departing from French territory was received from an AFTN address in another country…
I think AeroPlus has an edge here because they handle the addressing themselves, but also state the responsible ARO including the phone number so you can always check if the FPL was delivered accordingly.
Correct comment on ARO Schiphol and receiving the flightplans by fax. We do the same and are in communication with them on this issue. They want to have control over the flightplans as they have seen too much going wrong when pilots use apps that deliver trash to the ARO’s.
As for filing VFR in Greece, true that it does mostly not work with the modern apps as they would expect to receive it in another way. However, a lot of apps and software deliver the VFR flightplans not to the correct addresses or incomplete. For those interested in how the addressing works, see here how we addressed this problem. It might not be 100% perfect, but it is close to that. VFR addressing engine: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-vK592zR06f5kvDqdFI9mNMx1q_1_lV7
As for IFR or Y/Z flightplans, Eurocontrol will distribute them, but there is still the requirement and need to address the VFR part correctly, which most apps/applications don’t.
Addressing IFR flightplans is easy as Eurocontrol takes care of that. The problem is with badly addressed VFR and composite flightplans. Then you get ARO’s complaining about not being informed or having to redo the work and that is where they take control like here in The Netherlands.
I garantee you that when departing from an aerodrome it will cause you troubles. In Greece you are mandatory to file a VFR flightplan through the ARO office on the airport of departure.
Interesting… I haven’t been there VFR since 2005 so this is entirely possible.
However some online flight plan filing services discharge their obligation simply by sending the FP to the departure ARO, which would do the required job – unless it is physically necessary for the pilot to visit the tower. Homebriefing.com told me they do that (for VFR flight plans) and I am fairly sure I was using them in 2005, and I don’t recall any problems. Of course I was not using AFPEX, EuroFPL, RR, or any of the others because they are way too recent, though I believe EuroFPL currently does the same thing (following the country’s AIP requirements which sometimes do want exactly that).
VFR flight plans have always had a certain “probability” of causing trouble. It’s almost worth doing the IR just for that 
Thanks officer… 
good point , the reality is a bit more complex indeed. Also the ARO’s do Data Validation against the EAD Data Base to assure the Flight Plan is valid for the Aerodrome, Route etc..
It’s true that with current technologies you can recieve a very good Briefing package made availble by Software integrators…..e..g. Skydemon, Aeroplus etc…
Things are improving but slowly …and yes the eurocontrol IFR validation does not take care (yet) of your VFR part…..
I had an issue myself two years ago when crossing 4 FIR bounderies flying from Belgium to Hungary on an approved VFR flight Plan (due to a data-base error DFS didn’t have my flight plan)…..it took me till Munich to sort things out with DFS…
Peter, try the AFPEX tool in Greece and I garantee you that when departing from an aerodrome it will cause you troubles. In Greece you are mandatory to file a VFR flightplan through the ARO office on the airport of departure. I’ve tried with several tools like rocketroute or homebriefing, but they fail in addressing the right Air Traffic Services for your flight. And if you got the addressing right, there is a good change they just trash the flightplan, because it’s from an unknown source. I’ve flown VFR throught Cyprus and Greece in 2012 and I was unable to address the flight plans myself. The commanding officers in the ARO just didn’t allowed it. :-) They are just to scared that the ATS enroute doesn’t know you’re coming and a Hellenic F16 pops up next to you in flight. VFR flight plans will be addressed by the ARO to all ATS units concerned with the flight.
Also in The Netherlands there is an issue with VFR flight plan filing. When looking up in the AIP:
1.1.2.3.2 VFR flight plan
A VFR flight plan (including second stage flight plans) shall be submitted to the ARO serving the aerodrome of departure (see paragraph 1.1.2.4). Flight plans can be filed via the internet using the Amsterdam Integrated Briefing (AIB) system (see GEN 3.1 paragraph 3.10.2). If AIB is not available, a flight plan may be communicated to the ARO serving the aerodrome of departure using a phone or telefax.
You see it’s technically not possible to file through a service like Rocketroute or EuroFPL, because they cannot communicate directely to the AIB. But when using Rocketroute it is possible! They circumnavigate this “issue” in the AIP to fax the digitally filled flight plan to ARO Amsterdam. So you file the flight plan with your iPhone, Rocketroute converts this digitally to a PDF and faxes it with some software to the Dutch ARO office. The Dutch ARO office gets the paper from the fax machine and types the flight plan over in their system…
Another nice example is Italy. If you open the ENR 1.11 document in the Italian AIP, which normally contains the AFTN addressing rules, it’s empty…
So unfortunately we still need those ARO offices for our VFR flight plan filing.
With IFR everything is easier of course.
Nobody flying needs help from the ARO offices, except that a lot of pilots (both VFR and IFR) have no clue about how to file a flightplan. That is where a lot of them will turn to the responsible ARO office. The Eurocontrol IFR routing engine is still being improved all the time, but at a slow pace. This is where several companies jumped in to offer better IFR routing engines and associated services. As for the VFR addressing, indeed, the UK AFPEX is doing this automatically as are some other software solutions doing something there. It is here where a lot of ARO’s complain about the bad addressing being done. In our case, we developed a rule-based system to automatically address the VFR part in Z/Y flightplans or VFR flightplans worldwide.
As for preflight briefs, there are lots of ways you can do that as a pilot. The issue here is that a lot of pilots have no clue how to do it, how to interpret weather. ARO’s can’t help that much here. Not all pilots are a member of euroga.org.
I must be missing something, but there are countless ways for a pilot to preflight brief. You don’t need to use any ARO. Wx comes from 1000 places, Notams come from somewhat fewer (but a single site like NATS can be used for all of Europe and probably all of the world), airport data from many like this and what does that leave?
It leaves Eurocontrol IFR route development… Eurocontrol promised to go public with their in-house tool in 2005 but that effort was clobbered by some politics.
VFR flight plan addressing is handled by several ways. The UK AFPEX tool (an AFTN terminal basically) now does it all automatically. I don’t know what happens with Z or Y flight plans but usually they have short VFR sections so nobody cares if it is wrong so long as the airport has a copy, which it will do because the FP is always addressed to it.
That leaves the highly unusual IFR-VFR-IFR scenario which might be handy for some Alps routes but I have never tried filing that, and some past comms with ATCOs suggest that they can’t handle that anyway (you would not get back into the IFR system).
Eurocontrol does not offer a service to ARO offices that provides the correct VFR addressing enroute to the ARO’s. They do offer a Java based system to support ARO’s in their filing needs as well as that their subcontractor (Frequentis, Austria) is buidling a web-based solution as well. Apart from them we (AeroPlus) also offer our services to ARO offices. See http://www.aeroplus.nl/aviation-software-2/atc-aro-offices
Most ARO offices are still working quite old fashioned style and some even use pieces of paper to help their employees to figure out how to address the routes.
