ACARS - Oceanic Clearance

[surface wind]

New oceanic procedures have come into force allowing aircraft on the ground in the Scottish FIR to obtain their clearance via ACARS. The last a/c I worked had ACARS (it said so on their FPL) but he had no idea how to get his clearance via it.

Could some overpaid captain (first officer will do!) explain to a poor overworked, underpaid, over stressed, got too many kids, lowly ATCO what it ACARS and how you obtain the clearance via it.

Surface Wind

P.S. If you were the Transat pilot the other day at BFS I hope you took no offence at my comments, I was only joking, honest!!!

[Otterman]

We have been using the ACARS clearance for about two years now. It works flying both ways, and of course works different whether you get it from Shanwick or from Gander, why standardize?

At Shanwick you can request clearance at no more than 90 minutes from your Ocean entry point. Our ACARS are preprogrammed to allow you to access the menu in a straightforward way. You go to the ATC page, press the Line Select switch (in this case next to Shanwick). You fill in the required fields, flight number and code, oceanic entry point and time requested altitude and Mach speed, and in the optional field you fill in your maximum capable altitude and alternate route you would find acceptable if you want. Then you press send. Within seconds you get a message from Shanwick that they have received your request and tells you to revert to voice clearance if you don’t get the clearance in the next 15 minutes. Usually a few minutes later you receive the clearance. You check the details, and if acceptable you press the ACCEPT prompt. You than get a message stating that your clearance has been confirmed. These ACARS messages form part of your journal and are saved. If it goes wrong at any point you revert back to voice.

Gander works a bit different but the basic jest is similar. As usual the trouble is in the small variations, but in general it works quite smooth as well.

There are also many aircraft that are ADS equipped which relieves them from the pain in the behind HF position reports. No such luck yet for us. Hope it explains it to you.
Regards, O.