Originally Posted by mmflynn
It is only the UK where you can embark on an IFR flight and part way through discover your planned and acknowledge route is no longer available and you now have to make it up on the fly. I accept that a UK pilot should 'know' this is going to happen if he files an OCAS DCT or for a level below the UK airway base. However, this has never happened to me in any other country even if I have requested a level below the airway base (but above their MVA).
Actually the UK handles this situation quite well.
I regularly fly Cardiff to Manchester, which means that between BCN and WAL I will be outside CAS for approx 20-30 miles (don't have the chart in front of me at the moment, but take a look and you'll see where the base level goes above O2 levels during the day.
So - Cardiff give my details to London info, who I talk to when outside CAS, and who re-coordinate my re-entry into CAS with Scottish (Manchester as was).
I even keep the same squawk all the way through. The crux of the matter here, as 421C points out in his post above, that you're not
dumped outside of CAS, but you've planned a route that doesn't involve being in any (which I suspect happened to the OP's friend, as I intimated in my original post here).
All pilots look at charts, but I sometimes wonder how many actually read them
