Presumably this whole thing matters only if you need to file a flight plan.
Here in the UK you would phone up the airports, book the approach slots, fly in Class G, get Class D clearances as needed (to say EGHH), then land and phone them up with your credit card details.
Interesting that tomjnx and others file multiple flight plans for practise approach flights. Swedish ATC decidedly do not want that. In fact, the one time I’ve tried filing a flight plan to a different airport for practise approaches and a second flight plan back home, ATC refused to close my first flight plan and open the second one. Instead they treated my homebound leg as a diversion! They said you have to put the wheels on the ground for the first flight plan to be closed.
So nowadays I file a single flight plan with the appropriate IAFs as waypoints and use STAY for the approaches.
NCYankee wrote:
Airport to airport is the way it is done.
I was stating how you would do it in the EU (since you can’t use the airport). If you look at the route Pytlak posted, the “ODPAL1F” looks like a SID.
Interesting how different the USA is… here SIDs and STARs are commonly issued, even if vectoring takes over sooner or later.
Martin wrote:
If you really wanted to do that, I guess you could use STAR/ SID. And from what I have been told, even in the US, controllers prefer separate flight plans. Don’t know how widespread that preference is and your way might be just as good. You just want to avoid unnecessarily adding to their work (activating a flight plan is easy).
STARS and SIDS are mostly used by turbojet aircraft out of the major airport hubs. For most GA flights STARS are not used and SIDS only at certain airports, many of which can’t be filed in a flightplan, and if they are, the flightplan will get rejected. They can be included in a clearance, but since they are often simply radar vectors and a top altitude, they can’t be loaded into a FMS/GPS. It would be totally unnatural to file a training flight using SIDS and STARS. Airport to airport is the way it is done.
Edit: as far as US controllers are concerned, they don’t care unless you actually land. Then usually a new flightplan is expected, although one can often negotiate a landing and brief delay on the same flightplan with the controller. With ForeFlight, an iPad or iphone with cellular, one can file a new flightplan on the taxi back and have the clearance ready before reaching the departure end of the runway. It is pretty seamless if the instructor files the next leg.
lenthamen wrote:
Writing down the outbound clearance when flying the approach is the hardest part :-)
True. Switching to the departure procedure in the missed approach also requires a surprising amount of extra concentration compared to just flying the missed approach procedure.
@jmuelmen how did you pay the landing fees?
That part was easy, invoice by email.
If it were me, I would call the ATC by phone and ask, or use the “C” office.
NCYankee wrote:
In the US, we can file flightplans with airports as waypoints.
If you really wanted to do that, I guess you could use STAR/ SID. And from what I have been told, even in the US, controllers prefer separate flight plans. Don’t know how widespread that preference is and your way might be just as good. You just want to avoid unnecessarily adding to their work (activating a flight plan is easy).
In the US, we can file flightplans with airports as waypoints. A typical round robin route might have multiple airports in the route. We just add a remark such as REM/Approaches each airport. The airport identifiers must have DCT in front of the identifier. That is one of the few times that DCT is required in a route in the US. So for a flight from my home base of KUZA to nearby airports of KLKR and KEQY and then back home to KUZA, the route field is “DCT KLKR DCT KEQY” and the remark is as indicated above.
