Trip to Channel Islands and UK - customs, flight plans, etc.

All about flightplans in the UK here.

PepperJo wrote:

In your experience, is Traffic Service generally available?

That depends on when you are flying. On a bright clear weekend day with masses of VFR traffic, it is generally not available because it’s too busy for the civilian providers (like Farnborough), and the RAF only defends our realm five days a week, 9-5; they sleep and play golf at the weekend.

On a murky weekday, it is fully available, as there is no-one else about and the controllers are delighted to talk to you.

In between those extremes, you get in between results

If you are flying in one of the corridors we call “MiG Alley” (Between Gatwick and Heathrow, between Heathrow and Luton and between Luton and Stansted) and there is a 2000’ cloudbase, I think that the safest thing is to fly in the cloud at a random number of feet between 2100’ and 2400’. Remember that you can do that without a flightplan, without a clearance and without talking on the radio, if you wish. That is one of the good things about the UK.

I think your German writeup needs updating, Bosco. For example practically nobody is using AFPEX. Most people who file VFR flight plans in the UK (very few bother, apart from PPL training) use one of the VFR tablet apps (EVFR or SD).

Personally, for VFR, I use EuroFPL which offers something like 10 free ones per month.

I also would not fly at 2400ft. I used to, but the CAIT software reports even a 25ft infringement, and NATS reports them all to the CAA, and … here you go. I would leave 200ft and that is using the autopilot 100%! OTOH an overseas pilot would not get the Gasco session; he would get a letter sent to his home CAA and they would probably do very little.

I don’t think so at all. If you read it properly, you’ll see that AFPEX is mentioned only very briefly, as a sidenote. And it is important as a bit of background for say a German private Pilot coming to the UK, because they will usually expect to be able to just send VFR FPLs directly to some AIS/ARO office which will then “take care of it” (as it is the case everywhere else in Europe). Since the introduction of AFPEX this is no longer the case in the UK.

You would be surprised how many old-school private pilots (even from Germany) are still around who have no Skydemon or similar subscription allowing them to file flightplans. They really expect to be able to just “send” the FPL somewhere via email, or even via fax! Hence, the advice, for those not having/using Skydemon or Eurofpl (I hate the UI, as do many many others), is to either send it to the AFPEX helpdesk, or just use the DFS-AIS site to file it.

To those having Skydemon, I obviously recommend using that to file the FPL, as it is just a few pushs of a button, plus it works very well and reliably.

OK; fair enough.

The EuroFPL user interface is not great but it is quite functional. The “modern UI fashion” also produces horrible websites, and I would include the framework which Autorouter uses to be among them The browser Back button disabled in most contexts (and if you click it, it chucks away everything you did etc). In EuroFPL you normally load one of the previous flight plans (which, being VFR, are always valid ) and edit the changes, which often are just the date. Very very quick.

Or you can paste in an IFR route which is validated elsewhere.

It’s got me out of a pickle a lot of times.

Skydemon uses EuroFPL. I introduced the two to each other

That’s funny; that site would instantly delete any mention of EuroGA, unless it was a slagging-off Yes; Derek is a good guy. That said, that post is 6 years old now. I have been a user of EuroFPL since they started.

Every country allows AFTN messages for VFR FPLs; it is just that for job protection reasons there is sometimes an internal “manual step”. It would surprise me if NL still do the faxing because fax machines are not easy to get and maintain.

(except messages from other AROs).

and that is how you do it. EuroFPL is an external agency. Search EuroGA for KBLIHAEX, etc.

More e.g. here. I would be amazed if they still fax them, because the Autorouter (I was one of its first testers too) has to do AFTN filing for Z or Y flight plans, and I am pretty sure they were not sending it by fax. If you really had to, there are still email2fax services.

But anyway none of this applies to the UK