Apparently, DFS people are sometimes willing to accommodate very, ahem, liberally composed flight plans. I once had to file a Z flight plan over the telephone when I had no internet connection and no way not only to validate a flight plan, but even to look up the correct airways. I apologised and asked if they could accept a route with very long DCTs from VOR to VOR, with no regard for airways. The lady on the phone agreed to try it, so I quoted her from memory the VORs I had on my way: EDKL DCT WYP IFR DCT FUL DCT OKG DCT LKRK VFR DCT LKBU
The plan was successfully accepted with EOBT being 10 minutes from filing. No surprises in the air, either – I flew it as filed.
Just found this in Usenet, from 2006, written by somebody I know who knows the system
I’ve had a couple of times that delivery could not find my flight plan when requesting startup.
Once I had the date wrong (EuroFPL is using date + 1 for DOF by default).
Another time I had incidentally filed a wrong callsign.
In both occasions I filed a new flight plan from my phone, waited for the notification email to come in, and contacted delivery again. All was fine then. So the whole process of distributing the IFR flightplan is a matter of minutes.
To add to Peter’s post the details can be found in the ATFCM Users Manual (https://www.eurocontrol.int/sites/default/files/content/documents/nm/network-operations/HANDBOOK/atfcm-users-manual-current.pdf).
More specifically it says:
$4.3.1
[…]
After coordination with the FMP, the NM decides to activate regulations in those locations
where it is necessary. In ETFMS regulations include the start and the end times, the
description of the location, the entering flow rate and some others parameters. In*
accordance with the principle of ‘First Planned – First Served’ the system extracts all the
flights entering the specified airspace and sequences them in the order they would have
arrived at the airspace in the absence of any restriction.
On this basis, the Take-Off Time (TOT) for the flight is calculated. It is this information,
Calculated Take-Off Time (CTOT), which is transmitted to the AO concerned and to the
control tower at the aerodrome of departure.[…]
and
[…]
Slot Allocation Message (SAM)
When does the NM send a SAM ?
A SAM is sent to AOs/ATS any time a flight becomes regulated (new flight entering the
system, new period of regulation in the system, in response to an FCM or CHG providing
new RVR after a suspension) but at the earliest 2 hours before the last received EOBT.
The SAM is used to inform AOs and ATS of the Calculated Take-Off Time (CTOT) for an
individual flight.
[..]
A few weeks ago I was cleared to the runup and so believed my IFR flightplan to be ok. Then we found out that I had made date +1 mistake and my flight plan was for the following day. TWR told me to contact the ARO and ask them to help submitting a new flightplan. As happens often, the ARO did not respond immediately, so I grabbed my iPad, amended the flightplan on autorouter and sent it.
It lasted a full 6 or 7 seconds after that before TWR called me and asked if I was ready to copy my IFR clearence.
Very similar to lenthamen’s #13 experience, except that “a matter of minutes” was, in my case, a matter of seconds, and very few of those.
This thread has been dormant for 3 years. Any news on manual correction of flight plans by national AIS? I believe Denmark AIS still does that if their homepage is used for submitting the flight plan. (In which case a few seconds lead time is obviously not enough.) Quite impressive but it seems most IFR pilots including myself use “smart” agents.
Well, except in very rare circumstances, I would think that nowadays, all pilots who seriously fly IFR do use some route generation / validation tool anyway (I have been doing so since the beginning of 2001), so normally there is no need for help from the national AIS in getting a Eurocontrol-compatible flightplan.
I can normally file an IFR flight plan and get a startup clearance within minutes. I normally try to file at least one hour ahead of EOBT, though.
I think Eurocontrol flight plans are distributed in well under 10 seconds, all down the route, from when the ACK message is generated.
The reasons for filing early, say hours or even days ahead, are
I have been told a year or two ago by a German pilot who used to post here that the German AIS will correct an invalid IFR FP for you. If they still do that, that’s a fantastically good job protection scheme, and probably a number of people will use it.
Of course they do. They all fear for their jobs, so they take on every possible “work” they can.
Actually, I would think that when asked so, most national AIS offices will offer SOME help to pilots in getting a valid route.
The UK case is special because it does no longer have a full AIS in the classic sense and also because the attitude towards “service” is generally poor in the UK.
But again, I think the number of invalid IFR flightplans landing on the desks of AIS employees is dwindling day by day. Most just use some software nowadays (which validates the flightplan beforehand) and then send their flightplan directly to the computer in Brussels.
boscomantico wrote:
Of course they do.
That’s their job. Same thing with the BRIA in France AFAIK. If you file using f****g Olivia which does not provide any validation, it will end up on the desk of a BRIA agent who will find a valid route, correct any other issues, call you if required before sendg it to the Eurocontrol computer for validation and distribution. And if you have a problem with a flight plan filed using some other tool like EuroFPL or Autorouter, they will bitch and moan about your use of “non-official” tools and if they are closed down you will be left alone to clean up the mess.
