IFR Routing out of controlled airspace

I really do not understand your reasoning

You are right of course, but I seldom file a flight plan. That is, flying from ENVA I have to file a flight plan. Before SERA, it was a shortened FP (call to the tower) with no requirement for reporting when landed. After SERA there is a requirement to report even for a “short” FP. When flying to-from small fields inland (mostly), you can fly totally “stealth”, or you can contact information along the way and say you are en route from A to B, “no FP”. If you send a mayday, they will come no matter what, the only problem is if you for some reason cannot send a mayday. On a longer trip with passengers for instance, the situation is another one.

Anyway, I was just making a point that flying IFR without a FP under SERA is perfectly doable, but something that will very seldom happen. At least in Norway, this can almost only be done flying from small fields with no landing instrument, so it will be “EIR style”, but in G air space all the time.

all flight plans would have to be closed

Even if so, the question is whether they will require them to be closed after landing, or they will allow doing it over the radio while still in the air. For example, the Czech VFR manual says:

2.3.5 Reports of Arrival.

On a VFR flight for which a flight plan has been submitted the pilot shall report the time of arrival at an uncontrolled aerodrome to FIC Praha or an appropriate ATC unit.
When communication facilities at the arrival aerodrome are known to be inadequate and alternate arrangements for the handling of arrival reports on the ground are not available, immediately prior to landing, when the aircraft is in the traffic circuit and a safe landing is expected, the pilot can transmit via radiotelephony to FIC or an appropriate ATC unit a message comparable to a report of arrival stating the estimated time of landing.

2.3.5.3 Report of Arrival shall contain:

aircraft identification
aerodrome of landing
time of landing

2.3.5.4 The following phrase is to be used for the in-flight transmission of the arrival report immediately prior to landing:

(CALL SIGN) … LANDING AT (PLACE) WILL BE AT … (TIME)

2.3.5.5 Report of arrival is not required if the pilot operating within the airspace of class G and E, or in the airspace of class C and D at or below 1000 ft (300 m) AGL reports to FIC or an appropriate ATC unit during the flight that the flight plan is cancelled. Then no alerting service is provided to such flight within airspace of class G and E.

Phraseology to be used:

(CALL SIGN) … CANCELLING MY FLIGHT PLAN

Overdue alerting should definitely work for VFR flights if the destination airport has an open ATS unit. If not, then you’re on your own.

Exactly.

However, in the frafting phase of SERA, it was being said that this UK thing would soon be a thing of the past and all flight plans would have to be closed, since that is what SERA says.

Now, is this one of the items that have been “deferred” by the CAA? Or not? Very little on forums like “Flyer”, so I
guess it’s business as usual for now. If not, I’am afraid there will lots of Incerfa action for the next say five years…

According to AIP UK, overdue alerting should definitely work for VFR flights if the destination airport has an open ATS unit. If not, then you’re on your own.

I know it varies from country to country whether the ACC will assume responsibility for overdue alerting in other cases.

Also FPs don’t work in the UK for SAR because the default assumption is that you arrived OK.

That must be yet another UK-specific thing. In other countries ATC most definitely try to contact you if you are overdue. Happened to me a couple of times in Spain, when the tower I closed the FP with somehow didn’t feed this into the system and the departure airport called me on my mobile to see if everything was OK. I now make a point of closing it over the phone. Same in the US – FlightWatch will call you if overdue 30 mins. If no response they start SAR proceedings (initially of course a call to ATC to see if you’re still flying, then to the arrival airport, etc). Also happened to me once when I ran into much stronger than forecast headwinds and forgot to amend my FP while in the air. All the above were VFR FPs, btw.

The main benefit of a FPL for uncontrolled flights is SAR

That however is true only if you actually fly the filed route.

I suspect the Norwegian commercial operators are required to file the FP as a condition of their AOC.

Also FPs don’t work in the UK for SAR because the default assumption is that you arrived OK. It is only if there is a separate person/party keeping an eye on you, and they raise the alarm upon your non-arrival, that SAR will start looking, and they will start by phoning the departure airport, and then will dig out the FP (all FPs get copied into a “secret” database). I would think that if you filed a FP from say Lydd to Shoreham but didn’t turn up at Shoreham, they (being diligent) would telephone Lydd to see if you departed, and start the normal proceedings after that, but they are not required to do anything.

When the sun is shining from a clear blue sky, nobody will care what you do

@LeSving, I really do not understand your reasoning. The main benefit of a FPL for uncontrolled flights is SAR, and the level of benefit is independent of the weather. Flying in Norway I would encourage you to file a VFR flight plan for every cross-country flight and ask for flight information service to have better hope of being found if you go missed in mountainous or deserted areas which make up 90% of Norway.

Then, the only reason for flying IFR is poor weather,

We have also extensively covered the benefits of IFR even in good weather that would not require any instrument procedures, in other threads.

In seems to me like we have drifted so far away from the original thread that we are rehashing old discussions.

The OP was looking for an autorouting tool, I believe, which

• worked OCAS (which is possible but computationally very difficult to provide in a public web based tool)
• magically generated routes which pass Eurocontrol validation (which is generally impossible and even if you did it with tricks, which is possible, it would not get you anything useful for the flight)

I am surprised that a certain well known VFR tool doesn’t offer VFR autorouting (in 3D of course). It would be the next obvious development in a tool which is clearly aimed at holding your hand all the way. I guess there would be a liability in that it could send the pilot into IMC.

And that must also be a problem for IFR autorouting. You don’t actually want to fly in IMC enroute, but unless you are in the Eurocontrol system, you won’t get the clearance to climb (in general).

SERA is suppose to standardise things. Yet EASA countries seem to do their best to keep the rules they had before SERA.

Standardizing doesn’t mean every little detail needs to be exactly the same, only the standard needs to be the same. Besides, from what I gathered from the French link, SERA would not make a difference because of 4001 (b) (3), not because of any special French rules (correct me if I’m wrong, my French is only as good as Google allows ).

Having being “forced” to study SERA and part NCO, since they both became effective last month here, I must say it’s not that bad. I don’t have to change my flying at all, the new regulations aren’t that much different from the old national regulations, except for the semantics. But now they are the same everywhere in Europe (99.9%). Details like if you need to file a FP when flying IFR in G, who cares anyway? It is a non existent problem. The only time it is relevant is when all the flying from A to B is exclusively in G. Then, the only reason for flying IFR is poor weather, and when the weather is bad, you certainly would like to have available search and rescue and flight information, hence you must file a FP. When the sun is shining from a clear blue sky, nobody will care what you do, or which instruments you use, not when flying in G.