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VFR flight planning issues

Would you be so kind and write me callsign and DOF when the problem with ARO at LZIB happened? I will check what was wrong.
Peter

[ I started a new thread as suggested here – Peter ]

LZIB

Good morning. So here is a summary about your FPL.

1.) FPL was recieved by fax – reason: FPLs from AFTN addresses KBLIHAEX (EuroFPL.com) were not distributed even in the past in accordance with DOC4444 and national AIP. Garmin/EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter are using this AFTN address the same for all four applications – KBLIHAEX. That means all FPLs from these app will be delivered as fax msg. (for example – in Netherland you are also not allowed to file a FPL via AFTN – they have the same reason). So if you file a FPL via these apps you have to call and check your FPL.

AIP SR, ENR 1.10.1.4.4 Submission by FAX
Flight plan submitted by FAX to CARO (FAX number: +421/2/48 57 22 85 or +421/2/43 42 33 90) must be confirmed by telephone by submitter (TEL number: +421/2/48 57 22 80 or +421/2/43 42 21 02) immediately after submission. Flight plan not confirmed by telephone will not be processed for distribution by CARO personnel

2.) FPL was recieved by fax aprx. at 07:30 UTC with EOBT 07:40 UTC – 10 min.

AIP SR, ENR 1.10.1.2 Time of submission
1.10.1.2.1 Flight plan shall be submitted at least 60 minutes before departure (3 hours before departure if IFR flight is subject of ATFM measures) or if submitted during the flight, it shall be submitted at the time which will ensure its receipt by the appropriate ATS unit at least 10 minutes before the aircraft is estimated to reach the intended point of entry into controlled airspace

AIP SR, ENR 1.10.1.3 Place of submission
1.10.1.3.1 A flight plan shall be submitted before departure to a Central Air Traffic Services Reporting Office Bratislava (CARO) or direct to the IFPS (IFR-GAT flights) or during the flight (AFIL) via RTF to appropriate ATS unitItalic

If the FPL is recieved by fax it needs to be put in the ATC systems manualy and also AFTN addresses for all ATC units along the route needs to be added. And that takes some time. If you are filing FPL from the ACFT and after you click „send“ in your app it does not mean that you have the FPL in the ATC systems.

3.) your first filed route: LZIB KOXER 4810N01659E 4807N01651E 4808N01642E 4808N01638E 4812N01627E 4814N01624E 4819N01620E 4823N01618E 4824N01615E 4824N01610E 4825N01608E 4825N01601E 4827N01543E NENUM WLD 4837N00914E EDDS

AIP SR, AD LZIB 2.22.6.5 All VFR flights to/from the Štefánik CTR shall be carried out only via established entry and exit points unless appropriate ATS unit states otherwise.

– first 13 coordinates are only around LOWW (it is not wrong, but for 62NM long segment 13 coordinates is little bit confusing)

– instead of using your 4825N01601E you should use STO

– instead of using your 4810N01659E you should use VFR exit point DEVÍN

– coordinates are allowed in the FPLs, but I think using them in area, where VFR points and also ICAO points are established is more complicated for ATC units to recognise exact location quickly

4.) you did not write any EET to boundary

1.10.1.1.10 In the flight plan filed for flights to/from abroad intended to be conducted out of controlled airspace, the pilot shall indicate in item 18 FPL an entry/exit significant point of crossing the FIR boundary with estimated elapsed flying time to the boundary from the place of departure. When entering the airspace of the Slovak Republic, the pilot shall adhere to the estimated time of crossing of the FIR boundary according to the flight plan, with an
accuracy of +/- 10 minutes. If there are no designated significant points on FIR boundary VFR flights shall indicate entry/exit point by geographical place or the direction and distance from geographical place depicted on the Aeronautical Chart – ICAO 1 : 500 000

In your case, EET/LOVVhhmm EDMMhhmm EDGGhhmm

5.) According to my investigation probably you click on your map on the village (in Garmin app) but the app did not file the route with geographical names of villages but sent all those coordinates. And maybe/probably (I do not know for sure) you saw willage names in your operational flight plan/screen, and you did not know that FPL was sent with coordinates. That is the reason you dictate via telephone (from your point of view) the same names of villages you had but ARO LZIB had only coordinates.

Final route:
N0172A045 KITTSEE PETRONELL ORTH SCHONAU FREUDENAU DONAUTURM KLOSTERNEUBURG KREUZENSTEIN STO EDMF

You: coordinates in 1st FPL:
PETRONELL 4807N01651E
ORTH 4808N01642E
SCHONAU 4808N01638E
- – - 4812N01627E
DONAUTURM 4814N01624E
KLOSTERNEUBURG 4819N01620E
KREUZENSTEIN 4823N01618E
STOCKERAU 4824N01615E
- – - 4824N01610E
SEITZERSDORF 4825N01608E
STETTELDORF 4825N01601E
HADERSDORF 4827N01543E

RESUME: I personally think that not all the guilt is on the side of ARO LZIB (or any other ARO) and it’s not that terrible at all as you wrote. Those web applications are only computers and there is no human interaction. Most of the AROs around the Europe have problems with FPLs filed via these web services. Some of the AROs do not accept FPLs from EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter/Garmin/RocketRoute because the applications/web services distributes the FPLs not in accordance with DOC4444, national AIPs, when there is a need to get SPL (supplementary info) there is no response to AFTN messages (or late) etc.

It is legal to use coordinates, but please if possible use full names e.g. Stockerau instead. This will make life much easier for ARO/ATS and yourself if you need to track down a point in your FPL. Maybe it is also neccesary to „upgrade“ those applications. Regarding ARO LZIB, there is absolutely no problem to call and ask for a help.

And for your info. FPL from Croatia to LZIB was also incorretly distributed by your apllication! (The application distributed the FPL instead of Croatian ARO).

Maybe now it is the perfect time to open the discussion about VFR planning in Europe. I have no problem to share my email address if there is any problem in LZBB FIR.

Have a nice day :-)

BRGDS Peter M.

.

LZIB

1.) FPL was recieved by fax – reason: FPLs from AFTN addresses KBLIHAEX (EuroFPL.com) were not distributed even in the past in accordance with DOC4444 and national AIP. Garmin/EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter are using this AFTN address the same for all four applications – KBLIHAEX. That means all FPLs from these app will be delivered as fax msg. (for example – in Netherland you are also not allowed to file a FPL via AFTN – they have the same reason). So if you file a FPL via these apps you have to call and check your FPL.

I wonder if KBLIHAEX is the company in the USA which offers the AFTN gateway which “everybody” in the electronic filing business is using?

Flight plans which are “I” go purely to IFPS. Flight plans which are not “I” (i.e. V Z Y) need to be duplicated via the AFTN, AIUI.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

This is extremely interesting. Learned a lot from it, so thanks for sharing. It explains why so many VFR flight-plans get “lost”

  1. Plans submitted by the flight-planning apps are distributed by Fax at least in some countries (WTF?)
  2. At least some apps do not file the EET to FIR boundaries – FIR boundaries are suggested entered by the FIR name (I’ve used ATS waypoints or LAT/LONG in the past)
  3. The apps make it very easy to create visual waypoints just by clicking on a town/village or other geographical feature, but these waypoints will be filed as LAT/LONG which is very inconvenient for ATC and ARO that need to enter the information received by Fax.
  4. Some of the AROs do not accept FPLs from EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter/Garmin/RocketRoute because the applications/web services distributes the FPLs not in accordance with DOC4444, national AIPs, when there is a need to get SPL (supplementary info) there is no response to AFTN messages (or late) etc. Oh dear!! I am curious what the EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter/Garmin/RocketRoute developer have to say about that. I have myself never experienced any problem using the AutoRouter which only supports I/Z/Y plans and where my VFR segments are very short.
LFPT, LFPN

Thank you!!
I’ve often had problems with plans with geographical coordinates (filed via skydemon, but hadn’t tried others), where the plan would have an issue (atc would report and “issue” or “not having it”).
Last time was last saturday, and I quickly “guessed” why (since it happened a couple times already) and filed DCT and had no issue).

Hunnicat wrote:

FPL was recieved by fax – reason: FPLs from AFTN addresses KBLIHAEX (EuroFPL.com) were not distributed even in the past in accordance with DOC4444 and national AIP. Garmin/EuroFPL/SkyDemon/AutoRouter are using this AFTN address the same for all four applications – KBLIHAEX.
I’m a bit confused about this statement. Surely the fact that KBLIHAEX is used to send the messages does not affect the addressing!? The addressing is done by the applications in question.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

The faxing is not done by the filing agencies; I am pretty sure of that. It must be happening somewhere downstream because, as I wrote, these agencies are simply using a US-based AFTN gateway and that’s the job done. That gateway is not cheap – I believe it is of the order of $0.10 to $1 per message i.e. not free.

Faxing is still pretty common today in ARO ops e.g. Brac LDSB is not physically on the AFTN so stuff addressed to LDSBZTZX (or whatever) is redirected (by some AFTN router in Croatia, I guess) to Split LDSP and goes to LSDPZTZX and they fax it to Brac. And the same thing happens with countless other small places so e.g. La Axarquia LEAX stuff is redirected to Malaga LEMG and they fax it over. Or at least that is how it was not long ago… one would think the internet and email would have replaced this? But fax is very reliable because it needs only a working phone line and crucially you get an ACK for each page – similar to telex. The main drawback of fax is when you have to re-key the text at the receiver (and the quality is too poor for OCR) but the destination ARO won’t need to do that.

I have some notes on the AFTN stuff here

Regarding filing lat/long waypoints, and setting aside the IFR scenarios where stupid IFPS restrictions force you to do that (I prefer the VORrrrddd method in that case) I think these occur because the principal app used for ad-hoc VFR is Skydemon whose users will use simple drag/drop to create random waypoints and these are OK in the principal SD market which is the UK because in the UK nobody looks at the route anyway.

VFR pilots should ideally make use of IFR waypoints/navaids (e.g. ORTAC, KONAN, KOK, MAK, etc) but they come up against this.

Regarding missing VFR flight plans, we have an old thread here and the info in post #12 I got from one of the electronic agencies which investigated why they got lost. No doubt there are other reasons also… /DOF has been widely implicated too.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Hunnicat wrote:

It is legal to use coordinates, but please if possible use full names e.g. Stockerau instead. This will make life much easier for ARO/ATS and yourself if you need to track down a point in your FPL. Maybe it is also neccesary to „upgrade“ those applications.

I requested the that (an option put recognised place names in the flight plan) from SkyDemon earlier this year, because the current way of filing coordinates instead of place names makes life very difficult in Budapest / Bratislava / Praha FIRs, where I mostly fly. Their response was that they would not implement it since it’s not permitted to have such waypoints in an ICAO flight plan.

Hajdúszoboszló LHHO

JnsV wrote:

Their response was that they would not implement it since it’s not permitted to have such waypoints in an ICAO flight plan.

That is indeed true, but some countries deviate from ICAO in this respect.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

Airborne_Again wrote:

That is indeed true, but some countries deviate from ICAO in this respect.

Of course I know. It’s just sad that one of the leading VFR EFB providers in Europe simply does not want to be bothered by customers from those countries.

Hajdúszoboszló LHHO
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