Read the Italian AIP.
According to AIP Italy ENR 1.10-8 and 1.10-9 a flight plan is indeed required for flight within controlled airspace. If the flight plan is not filed prior to the flight, AFIL must be done at least 10 minutes prior to planned entry into controlled airspace, presumably with some FIS unit.
The AIP does not mention abbreviated flight plans as far as I can see.
So my assumption is that he tried to enter a TMA without having previously filed a FPL (neither full FPL prior to the flight, or AFIL with a FIS unit) and Rome Approach refused to talk to him for that very reason. This assumption is corroborated by the fact that once he filed a FPL he was granted clearance to transit controlled airspace.
That is like Spain then, which also needs a formal (not airborne) FP for any flight in CAS.
But why didn’t Italian ATC explain their refusal? Perhaps insufficient ELP?
Peter wrote:
But why didn’t Italian ATC explain their refusal? Perhaps insufficient ELP?
Aviathor wrote:
Read the Italian AIP.I don’t see that the AIP pages you refer to say anything about that. There is a passage at the beginning of ENR 1.10 that you must submit a flight plan before operating as a controlled flight, but that is self-evident. That requirement is already in SERA, but that it itself does not mean that you have to file a flight plan (not even an AFIL). SERA expressly allows you to pass the minimum necessary details to ATC by radio.According to AIP Italy ENR 1.10-8 and 1.10-9 a flight plan is indeed required for flight within controlled airspace. If the flight plan is not filed prior to the flight, AFIL must be done at least 10 minutes prior to planned entry into controlled airspace, presumably with some FIS unit.
My approach to weird countries: File a flight plan while on the ground (it doesn’t take more than 5 seconds in SkyDemon), and if you stick around long enough you will learn other tricks.
Airborne_Again wrote:
I don’t see that the AIP pages you refer to say anything about that.
The 10 minutes requirement is in line with SERA
Airborne_Again wrote:
SERA expressly allows you to pass the minimum necessary details to ATC by radio.
I just went through SERA section IV and found no such thing. Would you have an exact reference?
This is what I found:
It does not say anything about just being able to call an ATC unit and provide a few information elements to get a clearance.
So basically an Italian requirement of filing a flight plan with the unit responsible for the airspace you are in 10 minutes prior to entering controlled airspace is in not in conflict with SERA.
Aviathor wrote:
So basically an Italian requirement of filing a flight plan with the unit responsible for the airspace you are in 10 minutes prior to entering controlled airspace is in not in conflict with SERA.
But this is what my colleagues did, in the air OVERHEAD Siena after takeoff… and then waited 40 minutes and were just IGNORED … so had to land and deal with it on the ground.
FFS..!
In that case maybe the ATS unit did not address the FPL correctly?
We can discuss this until our faces all turn blue, but so far the only lesson one can learn from this is to file VFR FPLs in Italy, until someone else comes up with a solution that is corroborated by some aeronautical documentation and turns out to work in practice.
VFR flight plans do get lost more often than they should, or do not get distributed to all the relevant ATS units. I recently heard of VFR plans filed using Skydemon, originating in France with destination in Belgium but that were not to be found by Belgian ATS/ATC units while the French units all had it. Last Sunday the tower in Perpignan could not find my IFR flight plan and had to call ARO to retrieve it.
There was a very interesting thread about one year ago in which a Slovakian (?) ARO employee provided lots of interesting insights into VFR flight plan processing.
Aviathor wrote:
[AIP page]But it doesn’t say that! It says that if you do an AFIL, it should be transmitted to the proper ATS unit so as to reach it 10 minutes before the aircraft. It does not say that a filed flight plan is necessary for a clearance!
Airborne_Again wrote:
SERA expressly allows you to pass the minimum necessary details to ATC by radio.I just went through SERA section IV and found no such thing. Would you have an exact reference?
SERA.4001 Submission of a flight plan
(a) Information relative to an intended flight or portion of a flight, to be provided to air traffic services units, shall be in the form of a flight plan. The term ‘flight plan’ is used to mean variously, full information on all items comprised in the flight plan description, covering the whole route of a flight, or limited information required, inter alia, when the purpose is to obtain a clearance for a minor portion of a flight such as to cross an airway, to take off from, or to land at a controlled aerodrome.
You need a flight plan to fly in controlled airspace. In Italy you can file a (full) flight plan prior to flight, or AFIL which may not be full. Nowhere does the Italian AIP make any mention of abbreviated flight plans directly to the controller, that I can find.
