Originally Posted by bose-x
It does not matter what his departure clearance was! The flight was at 18:13 which is after official sunset and so automatically becomes an IFR flight. As a result of weight the aircraft becomes eligible for enroute charging.
Sorry bose, you have missed the point.
This isn't a thread about whether he is or is not IFR, as patently he is if he is flying at night in the UK
What it is about is enroute charging, and how those charges are (rightly or wrongly) incurred.
The
only way he could be charged enroute charges is if "
someone" logs his flight IFR, and 99% of the time this information comes from the departure tower records or the destination arrival records and not from any enroute source.
Whether it is an IFR flight because it is night is moot: He was charged for it because he departed Liverpool at night and they logged it as such.
He probably
wouldn't have been charged for it had he departed Wellsbourne for a local flight returning to Wellsbourne with no other landings and all at night, nor many other non-ATC airfields, private strips etc.
.