how do you get informed that your FP was tossed out and what is the way to solve such a situation?
You don’t get informed.
The first you find out is when the departure tower gives you a departure clearance which is “obviously” not for a high altitude Eurocontrol route.
In general:
If you are departing from a Class G airport, you will be asked to contact the regional FIS (London Information, say 124.60). A non-UK pilot will probably not recognise what has happened. The wording not containing the classical words “cleared to [destination] via flight planned route” might be a clue, but so much European ATC only just hangs in there with English language proficiency that you would probably not think much about this.
If you are departing from a CAS airport, you get what sounds like a departure clearance but after you depart, the next frequency will be some regional FIS or a lower airspace radar unit. This happened to me departing from EGNS (Isle of Man) when I filed “I” for 5000ft which is way too low to be of interest to what was then Manchester Control. The next frequency I got was RAF Valley which was an instant give-away that I got shafted and relegated to Class G for the rest of the flight, but a non-UK pilot would probably just call them up.
UK pilots with the IMC Rating get into this situation from time to time, thinking that an “I” flight plan with an ACK gives them an enroute clearance of some sort.
Yes it’s a bad system but is the result of the politics of money, more recently ATC privatisation, and job protection. The solution is to never file below about FL100 – with certain exceptions which you need to know are OK.
You get similar stuff in Germany where DFS change routes around, though AFAIK they don’t summarily delete FPs.
If you have a flight plan in Germany, you can fly. Exceptions must be extremely rare. What can happen is that your flight plan gets suspended (FLS). You would then be informed via email/SMS when using our system. The reason is given as part of the message. This happened a couple of times during the AERO show because they specifically checked all flight plans for a matching slot. It also happens when you miss your departure time window but usually the plan can be activated by ATC in the air. The proper reaction to a missed departure slot is a delay through our interface.
The other thing that can happen is that AIS issue a route change, you also get an email with the new route then. If you don’t receive it in time, it doesn’t matter because you will get it again as part of your clearance, it only might come as a surprise then. Again, this happens very rarely, we have only seen a handful of CHG messages that actually change the route.
The UK OCAS trap is mostly gone because autorouter makes use of the NATS standard route document (SRD) which is a collection of “acceptable” OCAS routings. All such approved routings are visualized with a blue-purple dashed route line. If you see that on your plan for the portions outside airways in the UK, you can be reasonable certain that you’re good. The UK is unlike all other countries, none of these complications are found elsewhere.
Even if you have two alternatives?Yes.
What’s the rationale for this? With two alternatives it’s perfectly legal to fly towards a destination which is below minima in the hope that wx will be better than forecast. Why should Eurocontrol make their own OPS legislation? If it is still LVO when you get there, you divert, and you’re no worse off than if you’ve planned the flight to your first alternative.
Flight suspension is an ATFCM measure. It has nothing to do EU-OPS, PART-NCO,…
If it is still LVO when you get there, you divert,
Not necessarily. Some planes can choose to hold at the IAF for quite some time and ATC cannot force them to divert.
If an aircraft choose to hold because they don’t have the minima :
- Your stack is becoming slowly occupied by planes who will not land at your airport for the next 30 mins because the don’t have the minima.
- You have to open en-route stack to handle other inbound aircraft.
- It becomes more complex for en-route ACC. En-route sector are very likely to be regulated.
- It generates more and more delay for traffic transiting via ACC while aircraft who cannot land hold at the IAF.
As you can see, if many aircraft depart while they will not be able to land, it creates useless delay for inbound traffic who can land and en-route traffic
This is why XCD is used on major airport with a lot of traffic.
You can read the “ATFCM user manual” on eurontrol website if you want to know more info.
