Autothrottle
Fair enough. But can you explain (I really don't understand this) how PPLs file flight plans at present? What route does the FP take?
I am sure that very few "PPLs" fax to Heathrow. The average PPL today doesn't have easy access to a fax.
The vast majority of UK PPLs never file a flight plan because they don't fly abroad.
I think most of the remainder file flight plans via their tower. What do you say will happen to that facility? If the tower used to fax it to Heathrow and cannot anymore, presumably the staff there will have signed up to the new NATS facility as a corporate member, and will carry on as before.
Those who have the initiative to fax to Heathrow (or have to because they are flying abroad from a non-towered field) can certainly use a website. For most people, faxing is a PITA because they have to find a physical fax machine. To a small group, myself included, it's all a piece of cake because there is GSM fax (from a laptop) and email2fax gateways.
Unfortunately, few UK VFR-only PPLs do great long European trips - it's possible (I've done lots of them, all the way down the Greece) but it's a messy process under VFR. And if Heathrow accepts a flight plan from say Germany to Belgium, that is very nice of them but I think few pilots would be expecting it to work.
Most UK PPLs pop over to France (LTQ etc) and for that you don't need much flight planning help. In fact if the FP gets lost, nobody cares because a) nobody cares much about VFR traffic anyway and b) LTQ is too busy to care; they just let you land and they are happy.
The private IFR group is different. These people are the ones who potentially need assistance, but they have already climbed the massive ladder to getting an IR and logging onto a website is no big deal. What they need is perhaps CFMU-acceptable routing assistance (CFMU) because that is the real gotcha these days, but I don't think any AIS unit offers that. The 'reroute accepted' remark is processed by Eurocontrol, not by the unit filing the FP. And occassionally Eurocontrol wash their hands of amending the route... in that case one has to phone up the Eurocontrol desk on one of the two public numbers.
But I have written all this before... I just don't get the problem. And NATS will have somebody on this site who can be phoned and do basic FP manipulation. I doubt they will be developing IFR routings either - the tools for that are in Brussels.