IFPS accepting long DCT all across Austria?

I have flown it very similar from Portoroz to Landshut. My route was closer to Salzburg. Will check.

This was my routing (RR)

Yours is on an airway, Bosco’s is a DCT.
Achim is on its way to Coventry for the ppl/ir AM

I see. But I guess if the Eurocontrol Computer validates it – it should be ok. No?

The crap IFPS lets pass is often unworkable for some ATC computer systems. So yes, you might have some discussions enroute.

The crap IFPS lets pass is often unworkable for some ATC computer systems. So yes, you might have some discussions enroute.

In what form are the ATC computer limitations?

The feeling I sometimes get is that I may have filed route X but ATC have a preferred route which may not be published as such (I guess KOK DCT LNO on a good day, or KOK … various waypoints … LNO on a bad day, might be one example) so you get that rather than the filed route.

Ultimately it is up to the countries that feed IFPS who are responsible for this. Eurocontrol just sits there and pays a load of unix hackers to write millions of lines of code to implement the various rules which are supplied to it

Achim+Tom’s router routes according to these rules. Previous tools (since 2008, the long gone Autoplan for which I did extensive beta testing, and the still working FlightPlanPro) contained large numbers of preferred routes which would be incorporated as the complaints flooded in. That’s not a good way to do it.

Our system (developed in a country that also invented the croissant) is very rigid. If the route is not EXACTLY what it should be according to the agreed procedures with neighbouring centres then it will either send out wrong coordinations with the next (wrong) sector or simply not allow the flightplan into the database at all. The autorouter DCT-hack is a total nightmare. Very time-absorbing. The last time I had one like that there was not a single known RNAV point inside our airspace, still it was supposed to cross the Brussels FIR. The only thing I could do was mentally draw a line from ADEP to ADES and figure out myself an appropriate route. That way I can at least negotiate a clearance with the neighbours. Fun stuff…when you have the time.

Does this mean that the country in question (sorry I have no idea where a croissant comes from ) sends one set of rules to IFPS and runs a different set of rules internally?

And it rejects flight plans distributed to it from IFPS, using unpublished rules?

That’s exactly what the UK does and it causes lots of problems.

But at least the UK publishes a standard route document (SRD), although they do not publish the rules operated by London Control for deciding which IFPS flight plans to accept.

I am not the author of the autorouter but it tends to use RNAV waypoints rather than DCTs. It can’t in any case use DCTs if they exceed the DCT MAX limit of the airspace in question.

It would be good to know what exactly are the ATC computer/IT issues in this case.

In the case of the UK it is almost impossible to find out because UK ATCOs won’t discuss it. Even privately they almost never discuss what is really going on. For example I have never managed to find out the criteria for rejecting IFPS flight plans. In extreme cases it’s obvious (e.g. filing one at 2000ft, in Class G) but there are many cases which are not obvious.

The whole IFR system in Europe is broken. It used to work “ok” when the national ATC services (who knew the inside tricks) offered free route development services but these have been gradually shut down. I think Germany still does it, but it won’t be for much longer I am sure because the salary bill is huge, and it’s used almost entirely by GA, most of which pays no route charges. The airlines do their own thing and anyway the upper airways are fairly straight so there aren’t many major issues like lower level GA faces.