Cobalt wrote:
As often, the truth is in the middle.
Totally agree with the whole post. There are many cases in which DCT are desirable, or even required in order to get a sensible flight plan, but they should be used with care.
The moment we stopped using radio aids for navigation and the moment ATC got complete radar coverage, airways have become an obsolete concept.
You are right about the concept.
However military areas (restricted or dangerous) are still designed to sit outside of airways.
Flying “DCT en-route” might lead to flying in one of those areas. Most of the time, ATC is going to give you shortcut if military’s are asleep.
That’s personal, but I prefer to plan flying airways and end-up with a nice DCT rather than the other way arround :) .
This is why I almost always check “Discourage the use of DCT” in the autorouter settings.
Cobalt wrote:
you are pretty much guaranteed a route that keeps you in appropriate airspace.
No it doesn’t. I have been on an airway in croatia and got a huge vectored detour because the airway went straight through an active military area.
@Cobalt, your post may describe the UK situation, but the rest of Europe I know works differently. You’re not refused any service when filing DCT. You’re absolutely not on your own. The “worst” case that happens is that ATC tells you you’re entering class E and should look out for VFR traffic.
Too bad, you’re missing out on Hungary, and fly huge doglegs in Poland unless your aircraft can do ~FL180, there are virtually no airways below in Poland.
Peter wrote:
I got the DCT ROU but didn’t do any turns; I was cleared for the ILS so just self-intercepted. I guess that was “procedural” rather than “vectored” – fair enough
I do not want to change the subject here, but just want to point out that ROU is 6,0 RN and the GS intercept at 2500 is at 6,3 RN. So the textbook would have you do an entry into the hold to intercept the LLZ outside 6,3 RN. At ROU 2500’ you would be 80’ above the GS 
All that to say again that LFOP will not provide radar vectors to final, and neither will Seine Approach at LFQA and LFQB just to take these three examples.
This actually caught me a little bit by surprise (at LFQB) the first time it happened, so you need to be prepared for what to do should you not be vectored.
Yes, I noticed the GS intercept point being outside the DCT fix, so I turned outwards a bit so as to intercept the GS from below. Technically you are correct; a procedure turn is required IAW “classical IFR”. I would always self-position, once cleared for the ILS.
Cobalt wrote:
bq. bq. you are pretty much guaranteed a route that keeps you in appropriate airspace.
bq. No it doesn’t. I have been on an airway in croatia and got a huge vectored detour because the airway went straight through an active military area.
Hence the “pretty much” qualification. Having a flight plan accepted for which it is known at filing time that it cannot be flown at flight planned time it is rare. The whole Eurocontrol ruleset takes routes into account that are only available temporarily (conditional routes / CDRs).
In principle, even NOTAMed temporarily reserved airspace (TRAs / ZIT / RA or whatever they are called in each county) should be taken into account, although this is less reliably done.
Of course this al is a big GIGO processor, and some countries are more diligent in publishing the airspace availability to Eurocontrol than others.
As far as service when filing DCT is concerned – you are right that this is hugely country dependent, all I said is you need to know what you are doing. Of course if you are planning DCTs in countries where there is no airspace less than E in the whole country you will get a service. In France, while IFR outside CAS, you will still get a flight information service and reasonable handovers, and recently I flew in Norway and it was all easy and seamless. In Spain, Italy – not so much (I don’t know their DCT limit).
And you can still DCT through a restricted or danger area… or use DCTs to force a flight though a TMA below minimum overflight height…
Cobalt wrote:
And you can still DCT through a restricted or danger area… or use DCTs to force a flight though a TMA below minimum overflight height…
As you said Cobalt, it all depends on how diligent the ANSPs are putting such data into the Brussels computer. Germany is very sloppy about it, ED-R, ED-P, ED-D mostly not there. I had a discussion about this with DFS and their position is that they have no problem with flight plans going through such areas because they operate a full radar vectoring environment in the whole country and they prefer to steer aircraft around than putting all this data into the computer.
tomjnx wrote:
I have been on an airway in croatia and got a huge vectored detour because the airway went straight through an active military area.
Because of large number of Croatian military aircrafts 7 in total including one that flies only on air-shows.
Yes, I noticed the GS intercept point being outside the DCT fix, so I turned outwards a bit so as to intercept the GS from below. Technically you are correct; a procedure turn is required IAW “classical IFR”. I would always self-position, once cleared for the ILS.
Please forgive me as Ido not have access to the airport plates at the minute and I am unfamiliar. I am interested in this discussion and although slightly off topic could still be useful for someone getting used to IFR.
I fly to more than a few airports that have an ILS with no radar. These will all predictably clear us for the approach via an IAF. However most of the time if asked they will clear you to self position, which allows you to do what it sounds like Peter did, albeit you are going to be responsible for your own terrain clearance (which ultimately you always are anyway, even in the cases when ATC should be).
To really nitpick, if in this case you are cleared to 2500’ at a point which is 80’ above the glideslope, you are still able to establish there. It is not recommended to capture from above but it is not forbidden and done every day in commercial ops. In this case 80’ above is likely to be within half scale deflection anyway (unless it’s really hot!) and therefore generally accepted to be established regardless.
The strictly textbook thing to do would be to fly the procedure turn.
There were a few other “textbook” options available to him
Pragmatically he turned to intercept the LLZ NE of ROU – at a further distance. IOW he “radar vectored” himself to a convenient distance.
