This has come up here
It also happened to me a while ago. I filed Granada-Zaragoza (Spain) and Granada obtained PPR over the phone right in front of me, but when I started up the tower told me that Zaragoza cancelled my FP due to not getting the PPR.
Is this actually allowed?
Of course the FP gets cancelled (or suspended) by arrival, non-departure at EOBT+30 mins etc etc but that’s a separate issue and is normal.
Was that after obtaining the startup clearance? I think that as long as you are not in flight, the flight plan can be rejected. Once you have received your clearance and have taken off, only you (as PIC) can cancel.
I suppose there is a difference between “Shouldn’t” and “Can’t”.
From my understanding, VFR flight plans are nothing more than a type of email. There is nothing to stop anyone sending any message they like. So people “Can” send messages that they “Shouldn’t”.
I can see why an airport should be able to cancel a flight plan, prior to departure. Perhaps the field is closed, and they’ve no way of contacting the pilot to tell them that. Then cancelling the plan might be one way of doing so.
But once a departure message is sent (on take off) then the flight plan is your trigger for S&R, and “Shouldn’t” be cancelled by anyone. The only message that should be sent after that stage is either a diversion message, if you have to divert, or an arrival message (closing the plan) once you land. If an arrival message isn’t received then S&R should be activated. Someone sending a cancel message is interfering with that process, and I suspect there would be serious implications for them if you crashed later and suffered injuries due to the late start of S&R.
Having said that, it can be just human error too. VFR plans go missing all the time. Perhaps the arrival airport never got your departure message, and assumed that you hadn’t taken off yet.
I’ve had occasions when I’ve taken off, and opened a fight plan, only for the arrival airport to tell me when I got there, that they don’t have a plan for me! So these things do happen.
Colm
From my understanding, VFR flight plans are nothing more than a type of email. There is nothing to stop anyone sending any message they like. So people “Can” send messages that they “Shouldn’t”.
Sure, and you can send a cancel message to Eurocontrol, too 
In fact the ease with which anyone with AFTN access can do that was one reason why AFPEX was so late coming (I spoke to their team, on a visit). I guess they have since implemented some restrictions behind the scenes e.g. a private user cannot generate messages affecting a 747… or such messages are permitted to originate only from specific whitelisted addresses (the airlines).
I can see why an airport should be able to cancel a flight plan, prior to departure. Perhaps the field is closed, and they’ve no way of contacting the pilot to tell them that. Then cancelling the plan might be one way of doing so.
They should telephone the airport of departure, who will send somebody down to you in a car to tell you (if you haven’t started the radios yet).
But once a departure message is sent (on take off) then the flight plan is your trigger for S&R, and “Shouldn’t” be cancelled by anyone.
I don’t think I have heard of such a thing (except possibly the one discussed here); it would be stupid. It would also mess with the “national security related” monitoring of traffic, where they try to match up flight plans with radar returns.
Peter wrote:
It also happened to me a while ago. I filed Granada-Zaragoza (Spain) and Granada obtained PPR over the phone right in front of me, but when I started up the tower told me that Zaragoza cancelled my FP due to not getting the PPR.
The same happened to me some years ago flying from Girona to Valencia en route to Malaga. At the time, Spain had the nasty habit of publishing NOTAMs that were in force forever (i.e. six months+) so unless you waded through a ton of paper, no chance to find it. In short, LEVC had a slot system in place and I hadn’t booked one. Like Peter, upon startup and calling GND the controller tells me ‘FP rejected’. Shut down again, shlep up to the TWR again to file a new one…. this time to Granada. Off I went 10 mins later…. (I ended up in LEVC anyway on that flight, but that’s another story…).
Not exactly the same but I have had VFR Flight Plans cancelled by FIS before – a group of us were flying from LHFM to LKPL, I took the lead to file the flight plans from my laptop. Two of the aircraft had similar call signs – D-ELKX and D-ELKC. I submitted the plan for KC, changed the details of the PIC and colour of KX and submitted this, received the text confirmation from DFS for both plans, then changed the details for the third plane. The next morning we started up only to be told that Budapest Information hadn’t received the flight plan for KX and we had to submit one, all other flight plans were in the system.
I shut down the engine, rang DFS and they confirmed that a Flight Plan was in the system for KX but that it had been cancelled – reason unknown. The operator told me that he thought that, because I had submitted two flight plans within a few seconds from one another with similar call signs, the system assumed the second was a copy of the first and it was deleted. He recommended that when submitting multiple flight plans electronically, to submit them by ensuring the call signs varied as much as possible…..
The most famous case of totally unauthorised flight plan cancellation was this year’s Friedrichshafen EDNY (AERO 2015) show where some idiot just sat there and cancelled (or suspended – same result in practice) every inbound flight plan whose ETA did not fall into his pre-booked arrival slot.
Probably the same guy who started telling me on final at EDNY (the year before) that I was too slow, and then claimed credit for preventing me stalling and crashing. GS <> IAS…
because I had submitted two flight plans within a few seconds from one another with similar call signs, the system assumed the second was a copy of the first and it was deleted. He recommended that when submitting multiple flight plans electronically, to submit them by ensuring the call signs varied as much as possible…..
You could not make that one up 
Steve6443 wrote:
a group of us were flying from LHFM to LKPL
But in this case, you only need one FP and put the total no of a/c in the ‘number’ section (and again in the ‘remarks’ to be on the safe side). This of course assumes a formation (or close to a formation) flight. I’ve done this a couple of times in Spain.
Peter wrote:
You could not make that one up
No, you couldn’t !!!
But in this case, you only need one FP and put the total no of a/c in the ‘number’ section
Only in case of formation flying.
Aviathor wrote:
Only in case of formation flying.
Well, that’s what I wrote. What isn’t all that clear to me is the definition of ‘formation’. Anyone ?
