autothrottle
I suggest you give me a little more credit for elementary IQ
I am too a "licenced Professional pilot" you know
Is there such a thing as an "UNlicensed professional pilot"??? Or a Licensed UNprofessional pilot?
The difference is that I live in the 21st century, where we have this new fangled thing called the "internet". And you can do some real amazing stuff on da internet, u know. I know it baffles a lot of people but, trust me, it is real handy for some stuff.
I happen to know about Eurocontrol, CFMU, how to design airways flight plans, how to validate them, how to file them. I just prefer to use a website service (homebriefing.com to date) which gives me a flag to say it has been accepted or rejected, sms/email, etc, over faxing the thing to some ATC unit and then having to phone them to check if it was OK. Modern pilots carry laptops with internet access and this is how things are done. One can fax from a laptop and indeed I can too but it isn't a first choice because GSM fax does work too great if the signal is less than 100%. Email/www is a lot better. I use fax for PPR to 3rd world airports (anywhere south of the Alps) though.
I know lots of people still fax flight plans to say Heathrow and it's very nice of the people there to accept them and type them into the system, but they have never guaranteed to accept flight plans from anywhere to anywhere (outside the UK).
You probably still live in the goode olde world of aviation, when boys were boys, gurlz were gurlz, and life was real, and a real professional pilot would walk up to the tower and do his stuff there. That is a great way to waste an hour or two, having to be escorted around the place by "security".
Actually, professional pilots have not done that for decades - their ops dept does it for them (online) and the pilot is just handed an info pack as he steps onto the plane.
I am sorry people are losing their jobs but I don't think banning internet access to some function which so obviously should be online is the way to stop it. It merely creates an opportunity for somebody else to do it - often in another country, as has happened here.
Anyway, most flight plans are probably filed by airlines and they file them directly into the system, sometimes (AIUI) using foreign units to inject it into the AFTN. Firms like Jepp provide this service. I don't really think a major airline is still faxing flight plans to Heathrow.
Is the FBU staffing (i.e. union opposition) the reason why it has taken so long to get this function online?
As for search and rescue, did you know that in the UK you are assumed to have arrived safely, by default? Your flight plan doesn't need to be closed. They start looking for you (and dig out the flight plan) only if somebody reports you missing.