achimha wrote:
Maybe not by the book with regards to lead time but I’ve done that many times and the Eurocontrol system is very efficient. Never had an issue.
Agreed. I have never paid attention to the IFR deadlines and works fine in Europe.
Agreed. I have never paid attention to the IFR deadlines and works fine in Europe.
I prefer playing it by the book and try to file 3 hrs ahead, or at least one hour even if we know that 10 minutes is all it takes for ATC to get the plan and act upon it.
Especially flying from France, and crossing the borders to France, I prefer giving as much heads up as possible just in case other parties might take an interest in me.
Also I do not know is what ATC might need to do to in order to accomodate last minute flight plans.
Aviathor wrote:
Also I do not know is what ATC might need to do to in order to accomodate last minute flight plans.
Nothing. That side is all computerised.
As mentioned early on in this thread, the advantage of filing an IFR flight plan 3+hrs early is to get preferential allocation of enroute slots. There is no other advantage.
I am expecting that pilot will not file a IFR FPL to VFR airport.
Why not if it’s not prevented and gives you better routing? Technically you can cancel IFR anytime even when overheard the airport.
Emir wrote:
Why not if it’s not prevented and gives you better routing? Technically you can cancel IFR anytime even when overheard the airport.
It is generally possible to file IFR to VFR airports in Sweden. I do it all the time. It is particularly convenient if the destination is in uncontrolled airspace as I can switch flight rules at any point basically without having to tell anyone. Also, it simplified the flight plan a lot if there is no suitable significant point for the IFR-to-VFR transition.
The thing is — if ATS object, they have a simple method to make sure it won’t happen: adjust the Eurocontrol RAD rules. Much better than complaining with pilots and filing services.
Yesterday I filed an IFR FP at LDLO with an EOBT in 5 minutes’ time.
It worked fine. Well, the French didn’t have a copy so they didn’t know what to do with me when I turned up at their border, but that wasn’t for another 2 hours so the reason must have been something else. Maybe that was why I got the amazing shortcuts through their military airspace which I have never before got, weekend or weekday 
The reason I did this was because I realised the FP I had filed (2hrs earlier)
would take me into bad wx over the Alps
whereas I wanted to fly through the hole shown by the arrow (which would be correctly placed by the time I got there, given the westerly airflow of about 40kt) so I cancelled that one and immediately filed this one
This actually raises another issue (for another thread) which is the difficulty of generating a desired route when away from a proper computer i.e. it is hard to work out what would be suitable fly-by waypoint names to put into the Autorouter. The Autorouter map can be zoomed to show aviation waypoints (it is no longer a google map) but one needs the IR or radar overlay on it. I vaguely recall the very old product called MT Blitzplan did something like that.
I still had to climb to FL190 in that “hole”… IR images can be deceptive because the OAT was -11C and that shows the cloud tops to be much lower.
How healthy is your new engine at FL190 ?
I guess this is the first time you bring it up there.
It runs great. +100fpm, at -11C (ISA+12).
Yes – 1st time.
