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Missing IFR Flight Plans

Hi there,

Departing an uncontrolled airfield and calling up ‘Information’ to ‘pass my details’, and open my IFR flight plan. I had a call back saying they can’t find my flight plan. Timing was precise and after crossing an international FIR, the controller gave me my Eurocontrol assigned squawk (so they must have found it). Why does this happen and what do others do? I had to resist the squawk 7000 and call such and such treatment!

DMEarc

p.s. Achim has kindly provided me with an answer (filing for departure too soon) but I thought I’d leave the discussion open…

Last Edited by DMEarc at 06 Sep 16:58

That was only speculation because the logs show that your plan was correctly disseminated to all relevant units. 8 minutes between filing and off black can work but if it doesn’t, your case isn’t very strong… The ANSPs all have their own computer systems which are often old and rotten aehm proven with all kinds of weird gateways to the rather modern Eurocontrol IT.

SERA provides AFIL so you can just demand that. Depart and sort it out in the air, that’s your right as a pilot under SERA.

As a matter of interest does autorouter have any problems with Amsterdam? On two occasions now on a VFR/IFR plan filed with Rocket Route, departing EHLE, Amsterdam have been unable to locate the plan despite an ACK from Brussels and the tower in Lelystad also having a copy. On both occasions we ended up calling the AIS to refile. On both occasions they mysteriously found the plans when we called and we ended up with the distinct impression that they were being difficult because we used a third party programme rather than their own online portal.

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

Hi @Peter_Mundy, I know of one occasion where a Rocket Route flight plan was accepted, but missing in the Eurocontrol system as it contained a syntax error.
See this thread: https://www.euroga.org/forums/flying/4677-accepted-rocketroute-fpl-refused-by-atc

An ACK from Eurocontrol merely means Eurocontrol has validated it. They will then distribute it to the individual countries.

It is what happens after that that is sometimes variable.

Eurocontrol address it to the various countries and their IFR controllers, and the airports of departure and destination. But each country’s national ATC system can still mess it up, so one bit of the route gets it and another doesn’t.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

@Peter_mundy did you by chance copy/paste a route from i.e. Autorouter into Rocket Route?
Because that is where an error slips in if you copy over a Z flightplan.

The first route element (N0110VFR) is ignored as it is seen as a VFR part of the FPL.
So Eurocontrol accepts it, but further down the process the FPL cannot be distributed as the route cannot be parsed.

The reason that Lelystad got your FPL is because of the VFR part, which gets addressed separately.

No – both plans were generated and filed by Rocket Route.

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands

We have never had any report of difficulties with flight plans in the Netherlands. We address them according to the guidelines of the Dutch AIP in ENR 1.11 and ENR 6-1.2.

Peter_Mundy, since you paid a lot of money for the RR subscription, I think you should contact their customer support.
I can give you the contact details of the pilot that had similar problems. He indicated that the PH-BEC had the same issues. Was that you?

Maybe these incidents will persuade my chum to switch – on both occasions there was a delay of well over an hour.

EHLE / Lelystad, Netherlands, Netherlands
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