Now I just realised why in France I never get a clearance all the way to my destination as I was used to from the US.
And you can file directs even if MAX DCT=0 provided you file to one of the waypoints listed as DEP or ARR connecting points for that airport as published in RAD Appendix 5. If the destination does not have STAR you just file to one of the ARR connecting points. If the departure does not have a SID, you file one of the associated DEP connecting points as your first en-route waypoint.
Interesting… That must be a recent thing.
Now I just realised why in France I never get a clearance all the way to my destination as I was used to from the US.
Probably because they realise such a clearance is effectively bogus, and not issuing it gives them more control i.e. the pilot has a greater awareness of the need to work with ATC along the route.
It would not surprise me if somebody, having recently graduated from the ATPL sausage machine, picked up a “cleared to XXXX” departure clearance and then just flew it right across France, with the radio off. You might laugh, but if you “go back to school” and recall the garbage taught in the IR today not much should be surprising.
by the international standard, if you get a clearance to your destination and a part of the flight is OCAS, then you do not need any additional clearances. Your original clearance is still valid when you reenter CAS.
Better report the UK as non ICAO compliant 
More generally:
My view is still that an IFR clearance (Eurocontrol flight plan) is more a figure of speech / a long standing tradition, than something clearing you to do the whole of what you have been cleared to.
The only time you are entitled to do the whole clearance is if you had a comms failure.
Every other time, ATC is entitled to modify the clearance which you think you had.
And they do this all the time. It’s the way the IFR system works. You get up there, follow ATC instructions as you go, negotiate with them to avoid wx, and sometimes you have to ignore their wishes (Captain’s privilege). This goes all the way to the landing clearance at the end.
If you simply set 7600 and carry on as filed, there is a high chance you will get intercepted. In IMC, an interception is impossible (well, the ICAO standard visual signals are obviously impossible) so they would probably just watch you carefully and shoot you down with a missile if you did something really suspicious.
A clearance to do something in Class G is especially meaningless because there can be no such thing. Of course ATCOs feel otherwise (they expect you to comply with their instructions) but that’s the bottom line.
One could say this is all just semantics but if you ask what exact clearance you have at any time, I think it’s important to realise what you really have.
One could say this is all just semantics but if you ask what exact clearance you have at any time, I think it’s important to realise what you really have.
I think we can all agree on that!
Of course, my point was that you have much less than you think, and OCAS you have exactly nothing.
A clearance to do something in Class G is especially meaningless because there can be no such thing.
Not quite – while they can’t impose a clearance on you, you can mutually agree to something that is very like a clearance. You are then just as obligated to maintain that clearance as you otherwise would be.
while they can’t impose a clearance on you, you can mutually agree to something that is very like a clearance. You are then just as obligated to maintain that clearance as you otherwise would be.
Do you have a reference for that?
I know about the UK ATC position that there is a “contract” between ATC and the pilot, but I don’t believe that has any legal meaning in the sense of contract law… obviously you should tell ATC what you are up to, but that’s just politeness and safety.
The other day for an IFR training flight i was supposed to do ELLX – LFJL and return. These are very close and it is known and documented that ELLX will vector you. LFJL is a rather quiet airport.
But still the CFMU will not accept anything without a STAR so the routing end up being totally stupid. My instructor confirmed that I will probably get a DCT MTZ quite quickly after takeoff, and that is also prohibited by the CFMU (LFEE max DCT is 0 NM). So i don’t really see the point of these…
@PapaPapa, welcome to the wonderful world of IFR. You had to file a northerly departure in order to fly south. Sometimes we just need to accept things that appear stupid to us only to keep the CFMU happy, although we know that we will in practice get a much more convenient route. The biggest problem it causes is probably that we need to carry more fuel than we would need had we been able to fly direct, thereby reducing the useful payload.
For a flight from LFPT to central France I had filed PTV as my first en-route waypoint, and got a departure clearance from R05 with a left turn for radar vectors to PTV which would normally take me overhead Orly then PTV. As expected. Shortly after takeoff I get a call from TWR asking me to continue my climb straight ahead and ready to copy clearance. I ended up being vectored to the North of de Gaulle, all the way around Paris, and I never understood why…
For a flight from LFPT to central France I had filed PTV as my first en-route waypoint, and got a departure clearance from R05 with a left turn for radar vectors to PTV which would normally take me overhead Orly then PTV. As expected. Shortly after takeoff I get a call from TWR asking me to continue my climb straight ahead and ready to copy clearance. I ended up being vectored to the North of de Gaulle, all the way around Paris, and I never understood why…
This is the normal routing when CDG is facing east and Orly facing west. It’s a rare configuration but it happens…
You wouldn’t by any chance work at Lognes, would you?
It’s really good to have some ATCOs on here, to put across their view. It’s very valuable to hear things from a different perspective.
In the UK this rarely happens (virtually never from IFR controllers) because the system is so politicised. Plus AFAIK all NATS controllers have to sign the Official Secrets Act. I sometimes hear something interesting from an IFR controller in the UK but I very carefully check which bit is OK to disclose.
