Originally Posted by FullyFlapped
Bose-X and Rustle,
You're both absolutely correct, but this isn't what I was getting at. I was really trying to get him to remember the wording of his clearance, because every time I have flown out of Liverpool, their clearance phraseology clearly states if the departure is VFR ("cleared to leave the zone VFR via Kirby not above 1500'" etc etc) - and this goes for (I think) every other class D airport I have flown out of in the UK - as an aside, is there a standard for this stuff ?
My point being, obviously, if he didn't hear those magical letters "VFR", he could expect the flight to be logged as IFR, and to wait for the invoice to hit the carpet ...
FF
Sorry I missed this earlier.
Yes, there is a "standard" for Class D departures, and they will explicitly be either VFR or IFR departure clearances, however at
night [in the UK] they should be clearing you IFR or SVFR (if you cannot accept an IFR clearance in D), but the departure will be "logged" as IFR from a charging POV as it is night. (Whether that applies to night circuits remaining wholly within the Class D airspace [and therefore always SVFR if not IFR] I don't know, but circuits wouldn't attract enroute charges anyway so can be ignored in the context of this thread
)
A pilot without IMC-R or IR could not, for instance, accept an IFR departure in D and would therefore
have to be SVFR at night whilst within the Class D CTR.
Even when departing VFR [during the day] I know of a couple of instances where a bill turns up by mistake (the default seems to be IFR unless the strip says VFR) but that is easily remedied by a conversation with Eurocontrol enroute charges people.
It is actually remarkably simple in practice
