Originally Posted by Mr Approach
Captain Bloggs - You ask "Did the inventors of IFR Pickups actually think sane pilots would just go VFR, look out the front and hope that she'll be right??"
Yes - that is exactly what they do, see this You Tube video <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJcEeKzeb5A> The Premier jet departs uncontrolled airport MIles City VFR and at 9000 feet requests an IFR clearance to Vancouver from Salt Lake (ATC) Centre. In the US it is not called an IFR pick up, as I recall Dick Smith invented that term so that Australians might understand the process. To an American pilot it is an activation of his/her filed IFR flight plan and can take place through a Tower in Class C or D airspace,
That is not what I was getting at at all. That bloke didn't even make any calls on "Area"/the Class E freq until he was through 6000ft, creating a Mangalore-type scenario. But that's beside the point. My issue, and what an IFR Pickup procedure is, is when you ask ATC for a clearance, they so "not available" (obviously due to traffic in the proximity) and the pilot then changes to VFR so they can continue in E. It's as if, magically, all the separation problems go away and the other traffic disappears when they switch to VFR. This is of course nonsense, and the other aircraft (with the clearance) has now been put in a potentially threatening and certainly unknown situation because of the IFR Pickup pilot, until and if ATC hop in and start providing DTI to both parties so they (the pilots) can sort it out.