Another point to ponder on is that VFR flight plans can only be received by airports that have an AFTN connection. There are still some European international airports around that aren't connected, so miss out on any VFR plan details
I find it puzzling that they would get IFR flight plans but not VFR ones, because both are delivered the same way.
Most smaller airfields do not have an AFTN connection (telex in the old days). They get inbound flight plans faxed to them by some big nearby airport, whose AFTN connection is rigged up to get messages for the small one.
For example an AFTN message addressed to Brac LDSB gets delivered to Split LDSP which then faxes it to Brac (if it looks important
).
This I think is one of the numerous reasons why trying to communicate with airports using the AFTN Free Text Message feature (available in AFPEX) doesn't work most of the time.
In the UK, the regional FBU would fax stuff to fields such as Goodwood, but nowadays, I believe, all these places are supposed to have an AFPEX account, and the "airport" type AFPEX account doesn't time out so they can leave the app running all day, picking up any messages.
VFR flight plans get lost for numerous reasons... they are like emails i.e they get delivered to the specified mailbox address but there is no telling if anybody had read it.