They must do multiple, for the numbers arriving.
Make sure the filed ETA falls within the booked slot, otherwise they will suspend (cancel) your flight plan, and to drive the point home they will do this late, when you are walking to the plane. That’s what they did to me. They clearly employed someone to check the ETAs at a late stage and issue the SUSP messages intentionally just as people would be starting up. They would have had the flight plan from Eurocontrol some hours beforehand…
Autorouter doesn’t allow you to hack the EET; you can only modify the EOBT to get the desired ETA. But EuroFPL allows the EET to be edited. Eurocontrol have a leeway of about 1.5x around their computed value, before they reject it.
TimR wrote:
@Airborne_Again did you manage to get an IFR arrival & departure under one package?
I was offered to book a departure slot but didn’t as I’ll leave on Sunday.
Emir wrote:
I haven’t seen many already taken slots but the systems is incredibly slow. For each response (like changing the date or confirming the time) I was waiting more than a minute and login lasted more than two minutes.
Indeed, but it didn’t crash or cause web browser timeouts etc. I’ve seen all too many cases of that. When tickets for a Rammstein concert in Stockholm were released a few months ago the booking system crashed hard within a few minutes. And that was with a major ticketing company.
Indeed, but it didn’t crash or cause web browser timeouts etc.
You’re right but if I gave this task to my kids, they would give up they are so used that everything is instantaneous they wouldn’t understand concept of slow response.
Just a reminder about the old topic of filing the right ETA on the flight plan. It was discussed here
There was a €50 fine, back then. So it is worth filing the “right” flight plan. If you arrive outside the slot (which most will, due to wind etc) they don’t care
Also file your flight plan well ahead (a few days ahead if possible) because CTOTs are allocated first to late filers (filing within 3 hours of EOBT).
Felders Restaurant booked for 7pm Friday 12th April. About 20 people is the total I have from those who contacted me.
Peter wrote:
Also file your flight plan well ahead (a few days ahead if possible) because CTOTs are allocated first to late filers (filing within 3 hours of EOBT).
That’s very important information. I usually file when I sit in the car for driving to the airport.
Emir wrote:
That’s very important information. I usually file when I sit in the car for driving to the airport.
I don’t think it matters how long in advance you file as long as it is at least three hours before EOBT. I.e. 24 hours is no better than 4.
Yes I think that is true, but I can think of two reasons for doing the opposite:
So for all short trips I pre-file both FPs; you can always cancel them, or delay them, and if Autorouter was not up then you can do it with a phone call to the departure airport tower. But you cannot file a FP via a phone call (yes I know some countries still offer this ).
In GA, departures are often a mad scramble and the less there is to do the better.
I have never pre-filed days in advance. For VFR flight-plans it always used to be the case that anything filed way in advance would just be “lost”. Is it that IFR flight-plans are stored correctly even when filed a few days in advance?