But the Swedish ARO will certainly check all fields and not just the route.
Yes, I’ve seen this in a number of national systems. It’s checked by a human, BEFORE entering it into the AFTN system. What they are usually rejected over is routes that make no logial sense. Eg. unrecognised waypoint names, or something like DUB37502 (Can’t be a radial bigger than 359) or an ambigious or unrecognised name.
Often with these national systems, a user enters a local town name, but the human converts it to a proper flight plan waypoint eg Swapping local town name for DUB27015 or an IFR waypoint. But if the human can’t figure out where the town name you put down is, then they will reject it rather than guessing.
But these aren’t rejected flight plans, but rather rejected requests for someone to enter a fligth plan on your before, and they are rejected because your infomation was ambigous.
Peter wrote:
We are talking about validating the route. I think that remains a very rare thing.
Yes, that’s indeed what we are talking about. But the Swedish ARO will certainly check all fields and not just the route.
Which parts do they validate? One can expect the addressing to be looked at. This has been a huge saga for years – ever since electronic filing became widespread as the various phone/fax facilities got shut down and pilots moved to electronic filing. As just one example, France implemented a system whereby a FP addressed to one unit would be automatically distributed and then they would complain if the filing agency addressed the FP to multiple units along the route (resulting in duplication).
We are talking about validating the route. I think that remains a very rare thing.
Peter wrote:
Elsewhere, nobody is going to plot the route and see where it goes, and there is certainly no formal VFR flight plan validation system.
There is certainly no centralised system like the IFPS and you can distribute the flight plans yourself through AFTN. But in the case of Sweden at least, if you submit the flight plan to the Swedish ARO – e.g. via their web system – they will validate it and reject it if it has the wrong format.
If you send the VFR flight plans yourself using AFTN, the proper subaddress according to AIP-Sweden is always ZPZX, which is again the ARO. Although I’ve never sent VFR flight plans that way myself, it is quite possible that validation will be done in that case as well. (And services like SkyDemon etc. respect the addressing rules in the AIP.)
lmsl1967 wrote:
As far as I know they are processed. During the last leg, from LGSM to LCPH,I made a mistake while inserting the route on the GNS430, which end up not being coincident with the FP, and ATC called my attention to that while flying. After realizing it, I had to redo the FP on the GNS.
That does not mean it is processed. That probably just means that ATS was keeping a watchful eye on you because you were crossing a wide body of water in a single-engine airplane close to the Turkish border and they wanted to prevent you having a close encounter with a couple of F16s.
The route not being processed does not mean it is not distributed to the ATS units on your route. Most places you can put whatever you want in a VFR flight plan route, including names of obscure villages only the locals would know about, but ATS certainly would not, and nobody will raise an eyebrow. And I would be suprised if any recipient would manually reject a VFR flight plan because of the route. Afterall you are VFR and generally speaking you are only supposed to file a VFR flight plan before flight only for border crossing, maritime crossing or NVFR. And you may deviate from you route at your own discretion as long as you are outside controlled airspace.
In the US VFR flight plans are not even distributed to ATC.
I do have a recollection of some countries preferring navaids/radials/distances or IFR waypoints, and that is perfectly understandable especially in a country like France where you have numerous villages called Sainte-Marie.
Some more autoritarian countries may however want you to file your exact route even VFR and may reject your flight plan if that does not suit them – probably for national security reasons. 
Nice flight, @lmsl1967
As far as I know they are processed
In Europe there are a few parts where they do look at the VFR route with interest. It tends to be where some “dodgy stuff” is happening e.g. bits of former Yugoslavia which are still technically (?) at war with somebody, or where there are tensions (Greece / Turkey for example).
Elsewhere, nobody is going to plot the route and see where it goes, and there is certainly no formal VFR flight plan validation system.
Validating the route on VFR flight plans generally would be very labour intensive because one can put in place names from a map e.g. “Upper Warlingham”.
The UK used to have a system of FBUs (flight briefing units) which were staffed by humans and which filed flight plans into the AFTN. They employed some dozen or two people, each costing (fully costed, with overhead cost) something like 200k each a year. They used to accept flight plans by phone (!), fax, and maybe some other means. At the end (the system was shut down around 2009 and replaced with the horrible java client based AFPEX tool – some notes here) they were reportedly processing 3000 flight plans per month, the majority of which were for VFR PPL training and not actually needed for the flight being performed. Commercial users – airlines etc – had gone electronic (moved to American filing services – you can inject stuff into the AFTN from anywhere) long before and GA files very few flight plans for real flights. Most of the 3k flight plans arrived by fax from PPL schools, and the rest were ones from airfields (where someone filled in the paper form) and those were faxed in also. You can work out the cost – of the order of £100 per flight plan! In the eyes of many, the FBUs provided a great service, accepting telephoned ones, reading every flight plan, correcting spelling mistakes and illegible faxes, addressing it (from a big book on addressing rules) and filing it to the AFTN via telex. But it was a system begging to be shut down. There was huge union resistance of course – the ATC business has powerful unions. Eventually it got the chop and former staff started to pop up on UK aviation chat sites saying how aviation will grind to a halt without this service… I believe some countries still run such an operation – Germany?
But the FBUs still didn’t check flight plans for CAS and D R P areas (danger restricted prohibited).
and ATC called my attention to that while flying
Could it be that what really happened was that you were heading for some CAS or some D R P area and they didn’t want that? Away from any of these, and away from (hopefully notamed) spots where stuff (e.g. para dropping) is going on, ATC should not care where you fly.
As far as I know they are processed. During the last leg, from LGSM to LCPH,I made a mistake while inserting the route on the GNS430, which end up not being coincident with the FP, and ATC called my attention to that while flying. After realizing it, I had to redo the FP on the GNS.
Coolhand wrote:
Regarding the DCT topic, you really cannot use it. It is not allowed in Spain. There is an Eurocontrol document (cannot remember now the name or reference) where each country (or FIR probably) introduces the maximum distance allowed between points linked by a DCT. In Spain this distance is exactly 0 nm. So any DCT will be rejected.
Rejected by whom? Will it be rejected if you file using EuroFPL, or if you submit a paper form to an ARO?
In any event, in VFR flightplans the route field is not processed AFAIK.
Coolhand wrote:
What I was trying to say is that neither ARO nor ATC expects to see any route in a VFR FPL
That is really odd considering the main thing it will be used for, except in controlled airspace, is SAR. But, those flight plans for VFR is more a matter of getting something into it that “fits”, rather than something descriptive that can be used. Some years ago, the normal way of entering the route when flying along the coast, was to simply write “coast -wise”. Simple and down to every single NM exact. But, that didn’t “fit”, so now we cannot use that anymore, we have to put in some coordinates instead.
Last 2 weeks just did VFR:
- EFKU – EPMO
- EPMO – EPKK
- EPKK – LRAR
- LRAR – LHUD
- LHUD – LGKO
- LGKO – LGSM
- LGSM – LCPH
FP passed over many countries, the only time I had one refused was the last one because I was bordering Turkey. I used DCT between IFR reporting points as well IFR routes when appropriate.
In many countries I was requested to fly IFR levels, VFR levels were replayed as non-available.
!! 
