Flight Plan should be filed for any flight that will cross an FIR Boundary ..?

In that case maybe the ATS unit did not address the FPL correctly?

We can discuss this until our faces all turn blue, but so far the only lesson one can learn from this is to file VFR FPLs in Italy, until someone else comes up with a solution that is corroborated by some aeronautical documentation and turns out to work in practice.

VFR flight plans do get lost more often than they should, or do not get distributed to all the relevant ATS units. I recently heard of VFR plans filed using Skydemon, originating in France with destination in Belgium but that were not to be found by Belgian ATS/ATC units while the French units all had it. Last Sunday the tower in Perpignan could not find my IFR flight plan and had to call ARO to retrieve it.

There was a very interesting thread about one year ago in which a Slovakian (?) ARO employee provided lots of interesting insights into VFR flight plan processing.

Aviathor wrote:

[AIP page]

But it doesn’t say that! It says that if you do an AFIL, it should be transmitted to the proper ATS unit so as to reach it 10 minutes before the aircraft. It does not say that a filed flight plan is necessary for a clearance!

Airborne_Again wrote:

SERA expressly allows you to pass the minimum necessary details to ATC by radio.

I just went through SERA section IV and found no such thing. Would you have an exact reference?

SERA.4001 Submission of a flight plan
(a) Information relative to an intended flight or portion of a flight, to be provided to air traffic services units, shall be in the form of a flight plan. The term ‘flight plan’ is used to mean variously, full information on all items comprised in the flight plan description, covering the whole route of a flight, or limited information required, inter alia, when the purpose is to obtain a clearance for a minor portion of a flight such as to cross an airway, to take off from, or to land at a controlled aerodrome.

You need a flight plan to fly in controlled airspace. In Italy you can file a (full) flight plan prior to flight, or AFIL which may not be full. Nowhere does the Italian AIP make any mention of abbreviated flight plans directly to the controller, that I can find.

Aviathor wrote:

owhere does the Italian AIP make any mention of abbreviated flight plans directly to the controller, that I can find.

SERA makes clear that an abbreviated flight plan is ok (although that particular term isn’t used). How do you suggest you submit an abbreviated flight plan if not by R/T to the controller?

I just noticed this in the Italian AIP GEN 1.10

3) A VFR flight plan shall be submitted, before departure, to the appropriate air traffic service reporting office (ARO)

I am not sure whether it means that all VFR flight plans must be submitted to ARO before departure, or if a plan is submitted before departure, then it needs to be submitted to the appropriate ARO…

Airborne_Again wrote:

SERA makes clear that an abbreviated flight plan is ok (although that particular term isn’t used). How do you suggest you submit an abbreviated flight plan if not by R/T to the controller?

Not really. SERA just defines what it means by flight plan. It does not say that ATS shall accept abbreviated flight plans.

According to AIP it shall be submitted by R/T to the ATS unit in charge of the airspace in which you are flying, 10 minutes prior to entry in CAS (see below)

But then AIP says

3) A VFR flight plan shall be submitted, before departure, to the appropriate air traffic service reporting office (ARO)

which is somewhat in contradiction to another part of the AIP that says:

The author of http://fliegen-in-italien.de/flugplaene.html says filing a flight plan, preferably using ATS waypoints or routes, makes it easier to obtain the route you want in Italy.