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ForeFlight (merged thread)

Thanks for that @dublinpilot
I have a colleague who wants to try it out (in Switzerland) and just saw what I mentioned. I’ll send him an invitation.

Sorry for the slight off-topic post.

LSZK, Switzerland

chflyer wrote:

One feedback/wish I have for FF is to work with Jepp to align their “All Europe” IFR and VFR geographical coverage, i.e. expand the VFR coverage to match the current FF IFR coverage.

I have the ForeFlight Jepp “All Europe IFR & VFR” coverage and it a bit of a mixed bag.
1) It has included for the past year the “All Europe IFR” charting that Jepp just announced for their own products and Garmin (Baltics, Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria). However the VFR charting doesn’t cover Romania or Bulgaria (it does cover the Baltics, Poland, etc just like the IFR coverage).
2) The VFR coverage includes the Canary Islands, but the IFR coverage does not even though they are part of Spain.

Noted @chflyer. I will see what I can do to help standardize those. Can’t promise anything right now, however, I will try and see what I can do.

FF Director of Product - International
KGTU, United States

As well as the previously mentioned requirements (e.g. fly-by waypoints) Foreflight needs to improve its routing to keep routes in CAS.

Referring to the issue here I flew the FF-generated route yesterday. It worked ok, after I dropped out of CAS around Bristol, but only because I got a service (in Class G) from Western Radar, and then got picked up as an IFR flight by Dublin who have common sense.

It is on the way back, where FF will also do a similar thing, with an OCAS starting section, that you get a normal IFR service from Dublin, then when the UK en realises you are in Class G they hand you over the Western Radar (and your IFR clearance has been silently dumped, in the usual way which countless pilots have discovered flying to the UK from say France at FL070) and then they try to get you a new clearance from, initially Cardiff, then a handover to Bristol, and then London Control for the last bit to Shoreham. This is the sort of route (this one was from the Autorouter, which is what I use for the various reasons given) which has to be flown at FL150 or higher (due to the airway east of STU having a FL145 base) but it validates at much lower levels

When Autorouter first started up (I was one of the beta testers, along with many on EuroGA) they had the same problem. It was fixed some months later. Basically in the UK you have to route in CAS.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter, even In a Jet I am often handed over to western radar on that side of the UK OCAS. I dont think it has anything to do with autorouter or FF.

EGTK Oxford

Exactly. It has nothing to do directly with the program that’s used. It’s only about the UK airspace structure and the fact that there simply are NO low level airways in many places (which some people just don’t get,
and then blame the routing tool), making routes between two random airports tricky, because either you have to accept huge route overheads or accept to be OCAS for significant parts of the flight. The routing tools merely differ in how they handle this “problem”, i.e. Which of the two aspects they prioritize.
Here is an overview of the UK airspace structure, showing how few airways there are in some places. Efer to AIP ENR 3.1 for the detailed version.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

I don’t think pilots always get dumped on a Class G leg. The classic is if you a routeing OCAS between DCS and POL where Scottish will often hand you to Warton Radar who will hand you back to Scottish sometime later.

Fly safely
Various UK. Operate throughout Europe and Middle East, United Kingdom

even In a Jet I am often handed over to western radar on that side of the UK OCAS

If you fly in Class G, then yes, which is what I posted.

It’s only about the UK airspace structure and the fact that there simply are NO low level airways in many places (which some people just don’t get, and then blame the routing tool)

Why, bosco, have a swipe at “some people”? This is EuroGA, not the “pretend unmoderated, pretend free speech” PUF where people positively enjoy that sort of thing and where beating someone up is regarded as a demonstration of intellect.

I’ve been flying these routes IFR for 12 years, so I know perfectly well how it works. The purpose of my post was to improve the routing tool. I am a paid subscriber to FF and have an interest in it improving. For additional clarity, the sentence I posted above was “Foreflight needs to improve its routing to keep routes in CAS”.

I don’t think pilots always get dumped on a Class G leg. The classic is if you a routeing OCAS between DCS and POL where Scottish will often hand you to Warton Radar who will hand you back to Scottish sometime later.

This indeed happened; I got a new IFR clearance, although only just in time. Another 10nm and I would have been doing a dogleg.

Actually I think the system has been improved since say 10 years ago. But the key aspect here is that there is a Eurocontrol IFR flight plan still in the system, evident from the fact that the original departure squawk is re-allocated upon entry to CAS. One still generally cannot get a “pop up clearance” from a VFR flight.

The point I was making is that if the route had been done for FL150 one would be in CAS and got a continuous IFR clearance. How this is implemented in the routing tool I am not sure. Probably by incorporating the UK SRD.

This issue catches out many foreign (non UK) pilots, too.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter wrote:

The point I was making is that if the route had been done for FL150 one would be in CAS and got a continuous IFR clearance. How this is implemented in the routing tool I am not sure. Probably by incorporating the UK SRD.

Would it allow you to validate at FL150 or did you just accept the suggested level?

EGTK Oxford

It validates by Eurocontrol at all sorts of levels OCAS. Probably at 1000ft also, despite the 4000ft hills So these situations need to be programmed into the routing tool. It is a continuing problem in Europe that lots of countries don’t supply the full list of airspace requirements to Eurocontrol. The Autorouter had the same problem, with the developer taking the position that customised code should be avoided, but he eventually had to put in the SRD. The earlier tools (Autoplan and FlightPlanPro) did these things from the start.

I posted the report here. On that particular flight I could have climbed to FL150 but didn’t fancy it for the short leg, so asked for FL100 for the cruise and took the risk of the break in the IFR clearance. The problem is that a lot of non-UK pilots won’t know about this stuff and will just think that a validated route can be flown with a continuous IFR clearance. And clearly there is some risk, according to how “big” you are. Once in Class G, you don’t actually know you will get it. There was a lot of OCAS AOC traffic (e.g. “Jersey-something”) in Class G there, getting a deconfliction service automatically.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Calm down. It wasn’t a sweep at anyone in particular. Why do you think it was aimed at you?

It generally refers to many people, seen here and elsewhere over last x years, who post and complain about the poor routings that the usual tools give them for flights across the UK. It’s a direct consequence of IR students being taught by ignorant IR instructors that “when you fly IFR, you don’t need to worry about the airspace structure anymore”. This of course only holds true for some countries like Germany, where IFR is (essentially) all inside controlled airspace, due to to the general class E blanket. In other countries (like France and Sweden) passing from controlled to uncontrolled airspace and vice versa doesn’t matter so much, since ATC is well-integrated.

It’s a also a sweep at the UK’s poor ATC system of course, but we have talked about it ad nauseam.

BTW, I am the last to defend FF Europe. In the details, it has been launched totally unfit for purpose, with many things poorly (or not at all) adapted from the US base product. I might look at it once again in a year or so, when other pilots will have flown into all the traps and finally ironed out the majority of issues. But regarding UK routings, it is definitely not an easy job for them, since, whatever routing they suggest, they will always upset some pilots, either those who hate huge overheads, or those who hate extended stretches of flying in uncontrolled airspace, without separation, etc. One solution might of course be an option/toggle for UK flights where the user can set his preferences, to either “prefer flight in controlled airspace” or “prefer short routings”.

Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany
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