PPRuNe Radar,
Bit of history,
Prior to the "responsible person" situation, if a flight was flying to an aerodrome with no ATS then that pilot had to "close their flight plan". They did that by making an R/T call to the FIS/adjacent ATSU prior to landing or by telephone after landing. If they did not "close the plan", alerting action was initiated..........basically the current system in the rest of Europe.
Is it not true to say that provided pilots do what it says in the AIP then they can not be at fault?
If as one is lead to believe, so few pilots file full flight plans in the UK and how few of those address them to extra enroute ATC units.........then ATC can not claim that they are overloaded with paper flight plans for transit flights.
Anyway, we have discussed this at the company almost as long as here. We are obvously worried about being overdue but ATC not taking alerting action due to ignoring a flight plan. The suggested solution is;
Flight from Welshpool to Exeter via BRI - File Welshpool to Bristol (Alternate Exeter) on contacting Bristol ATC announce diversion to Exeter. In that case should we fail to turn up at the Bristol zone Bristol will start alerting action and later if we fail to turn up at Exeter, Exeter will start alerting action.........thus we have the required alerting action normally expected.
It's no problem for us......would it make any more work for ATC than simply not ignoring transit flight plans?
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Squibbler,
I was sure that this was about zone transits.......and one needs a flight plan for zone transits...still talking about zone transits.
Thankyou for the quotation, I will considder myself a wise man.
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Vintage ATCO,
That old chestnut gets trotted out by UK ATCOs everytime someone fails to say how wonderfull UK ATC is.
I can count on one hand the number of ATCOs I know (I am not one) and only 2 are from the UK........all except 1 are retired........so I doubt if I know you but please email me if you do!
Judging from the various forums we must have a lot of disgruntled Pilots, ATCOs, Engineers, Spotters and Pimply bums with noting to add to the debate!
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Flyin'Dutch,
Hier is het bericht in onze taal. U hebt geen bijdrage tot het debat geleverd. U weet wat niet wij spreken over zodat maakt u eenvoudig kinderachtige persoonlijke aanvallen.
There is a lot right with the UK system. This is probably one of the few places where the AIP says one thing but it seems practice is something different.
You still can't help having a look tho!
Regards,
DFC