I had this on Tuesday… LDSB-EGKA, we found stronger than forecast winds, plus ISA+15 made it hard to climb above some IMC with FL160 tops, so with ADL150 help I did some detours, using up a load of TKS fluid 
and eventually with the landing FOB showing not a lot over 10 USG, and even stronger winds expected in NE France, I decided to quit while still losing and diverted to LFGA (Colmar) for a refuel.
Colmar has ATC and they closed the flight plan for us. A really great efficient and amazingly low cost airport. Need the AIR BP card but I have one.
Then I knocked up a quick LFGA-EGKA one with the Autorouter but it would not file. I saw a couple of different error messages. One was about a time overlap with another FP – obviously this was because the old one was still in the system. Another was “unknown error”.
Colmar ATC were sure they had closed the previous FP, which left me with no option I could think of. I phoned up London Control on a special number I have had for years but never used before, and they were great, phoning through to their Afpex (flight plan filing) desk to get the old FP cleaned out.
While I was on that call, I continued to press the FILE button on the Autorouter and amazingly after some minutes (approx 30-60 mins after the FP was closed by LFGA ATC) the new FP was accepted! So I told LC that it was all ok now; they weren’t sure if they did anything in time.
I wonder what was happening, and what could be done to avoid this in the future?
The main problem is that a FP filed via one FP filing agency (e.g. AR, EuroFPL, etc) can be manipulated only by that agency’s user interface. You can phone up an airport (usually has to be one which was addressed on the FP) and ask them to cancel or delay a FP, but if they say there isn’t one??
I tend to call Eurocontrol help desk in that situation.
Thanks – numbers duly noted
I still wonder what was happening. I know you can file a VFR FP and an IFR FP which overlap because this is not checked, and that would have been one (desperate) way to get home. You would need some current VFR charts… I do have a current French one.
It happened to me once but it was resolved by the tower.
Peter wrote:
The main problem is that a FP filed via one FP filing agency (e.g. AR, EuroFPL, etc) can be manipulated only by that agency’s user interface.
I’m not so sure of that. ELLX ARO once told me they could change a FP they didn’t originate, but they would need to “retype it completely” since they would become the originator, so I would have to repeat the whole contents to me. That was very weird to me, since:
I can easily believe that once changed by an ARO office, the FP cannot anymore be manipulated by that agency’s user interface and/or the agency will not have a up-to-date version of the plan :)
Well, yes, it depends on the detail.
If it is an IFR FP, in Europe this goes direct to the Eurocontrol database and anybody with sufficient credentials can access or edit it there. But your average airport cannot; they can do a DLY or ARR etc message only AFAIK. These messages need very little info about the FP (tail number, EOBT, not much else) and even UK AFPEX account holders could do these for an aircraft they don’t own (not sure of safeguards to prevent vandalism; there must be some and I suspect if there are some they are size based so you cannot hack a 737 FP).
A normal airport can probably query it i.e. see the whole FP. I have seen evidence of this e.g. ATCOs being able to access anybody’s FP.
I think the point I was getting at is that only the originator can offer you (the pilot) a user interface for manipulating it. And indeed these agencies limit you to yours so e.g. you cannot use the AR to delay a FP filed with EuroFPL. That’s because they have structured their user interface thus. With an AFPEX account you could DLY etc a FP originally filed via AR or via EuroFPL, etc because that is just a standard AFTN message.
VFR FPs are a different thing because they don’t go into a standard database like IFPS. They get send over the AFTN to the addresses on them, and there they may end up in local databases, as well as “national security” databases accessible to the police etc. Anybody with AFTN access can issue DLY etc messages for these.
I think to kill an orphaned IFR FP (my post #1) you need IFPS access. But maybe an ARR message would do it? But if the original destination was EGKA and you landed at LFGA, can LFGA issue an ARR? I don’t know. I know the system handles diversions explicitly, and I know for a fact that the original destination (and I believe the departure airport too) gets copied on these. Maybe a diversion was not generated for my LFGA landing (it was organised in a matter of minutes) hence the problem.
I had a similar problem on Wednesday with an IFR plan from LIRZ (Perugia) to LFQB (Troyes). Initial level filed was F100 climbing in stages to F140 to cross the Alps. This was accepted on the evening before.
On Wednesday morning, I found that the plan had been suspended and inquiries showed that because of a nearby NATO exercise, the lowest initial level acceptable was F120. In the old days, this amendment would have been manually made in a couple of minutes locally and off you would go. For some reason I could not cancel the suspended flight plan on the originator user interface which would then allow me to file a new one and eventually got Perugia TWR to do this for me and after a couple of minutes, the new one was accepted. I have an AFPEX account but have not used it for years because of its clunky interface.
Peter wrote:
I think to kill an orphaned IFR FP (my post #1) you need IFPS access.
I’d expect using https://secais.dfs.de/pilotservice/preparation/msg/msg_edit.jsp?type=CNL would work (like the AFPEX scenario) even if you didn’t file it from there.
Peter wrote:
VFR FPs are a different thing (…) Anybody with AFTN access can issue DLY etc messages for these.
And a change message would allow you to change anything, wouldn’t it?
Peter wrote:
if the original destination was EGKA and you landed at LFGA, can LFGA issue an ARR?
Diversions happen, even to aerodromes that are not your filed alternate. I’d expect the destination can close your flightplan with an arrival message. Plus, with an AutoRouter flightplan, you can send the ARR message yourself. And again, AFPEX or https://secais.dfs.de/pilotservice/preparation/msg/msg_edit.jsp?type=ARR would work?
In my memory, one could even send a change message on https://secais.dfs.de/pilotservice/preparation/msg/msg_edit.jsp, but this seems to have disappeared.
Those are super tips, Lionel. I had forgotten about that DFS site. Turns out I had set up a login, and one can even file flight plans through it.
My best guess – you were talking Autorouter and for Autorouter to work your changes have to propagate through a whole world of IT equipment. It may have only been a matter of the information not distributed fast enough for your needs, thus blocking a request because the system did not know at that point of the changes elsewhere. Digital data does have a slower than expected distribution speed in todays scary programmed systems.
