Flight Plans for GA, and do most pilots know how to use them?
After a certain 'incident' that happened in work today, it made me wonder do most pilots know how to file a Flight Plan correctly and do most of us know how to use them?
Basically to summarise, we had received a flight plan for some guy who wanted to fly from N.I to the Northwest of England in a flex- winged micro!
The weather on both side of the Sea was fine and the guy had set off as per plan, however with about 40mins left on the aircraft’s ETA the weather this side had deteriorated very badly with strong winds and very heavy rain! (Not forecasted).
With the ETA becoming ever more closer, and the weather worsening we had decided to ring his point of departure and see if the guy had actually left, or turned around due to bad weather.. The A/C had departed and was handed off by the particular ATC unit so using the info from the very detailed routing off the received flight plan 'we' was able to ring around various ATC / RADAR units and try to track the current position of the aircraft. Cutting a long story short the micro was finally tracked down just on the Northwest coast of England and was putting down into a small micro strip due to the worsening weather. Later on the pilot phoned us, after ringing Flight Plans himself, and iformed us of what had happened. Thankfully the pilot of this micro was very switched on and knew what he was doing, before and after landing and all ended well.
However it got me thinking, If the flight plan had not been so detailed with routing etc, would this of been as easy for the ground services to track him down? Also how many of us would of decided to ring someone and let them know they had let down at a particular place (which was not the initial destination, nor the Planned Divert)?
Also, since 99.9% of us have mobile phones these days, would it not be an idea to include this under 'other remarks' when filing a flight plan?
Anyway this particular incident did get me thinking, and i decided to make this post in the hope that it to would get you thinking.. After all that’s what this forum is all about .. Right?
SSC.