It's not really that moot.

Firstly, as pointed out. Follow the procedure, and you can be seen to be behaving predictably.
Do something different, and maybe you start to cause greater concerns.
Secondly. What if your planned route is relatively short, or comm fail is quite late? In the time it takes to get a pair of jets to intercept you, you may already be at your destination. If you end up at the appropriate fix, descend as appropriate, and arrange your approach to be close to (as practicable) your planned arrival time, then hopefully all should end well.

(I shall now duck for cover, and don anti-flaming suit)

Thanks for all the posts.

arrow

Think about the application rather than the procedure. In the real world what would really happen? Anything is the answer, and every ATCO across the world will be trained with this in mind.

There are so many ways and means of understanding a problem and knowing what the next move is, watching Mode S to see the level select, heading select etc, squawking 7600, sending messages to company, Sat Phones, or if losing RTF is a feature of failures, watching everything failing (ie Mode S or elements of it all the way to total transponder failure).

Whatever the circumstances, I can imagine a pair of escorts will be soon on the scene and every other track in the vicinity will be vectored elsewhere, it almost doesn't matter what you do in the cockpit, because you'll be the only one in your piece of sky anyway.

SIGNIFICANT THREAD DRIFT SUGGESTED:

What was the reason for a RCF - other than crew's fingertrouble / falling asleep - that you heard / know of? With today's, no: 1990's, technology I wonder.

Maybe time for ATCOs' stories ...

I visited Swanick last year with a group from my airline and one of our hosts asked what we thought about returning to the departure airfield in the event of a radio failure. We commented that we might be going around the hold for a number of hours to get down to a reasonable landing weight.

Interesting comment from tubby.

Many years ago, the subject of RTF failure came up at one of our 'pilot/controller forums'......Held at a local hostelry, over beer and chilli/curry.
When we asked the question....."What would you do if you experienced RTF failure while flying a SID"?
Several pilots from the same operator agreed that they would squawk 7600 and return to the inbound hold.
"If you think I'm going to the Iberian Peninsula, Greece, or The Canaries without a radio, think again", were the reasons given.

I guess the procedure is covering all types of aircrafts (from C152 to 380) in all types of environments (from Mbuji May Congo to JFK)

That's why the procedure still offer the option:
"in IMC or when the pilot of an IFR flight consider that VMC procedure is not appropriate"

So out of JFK, if you fancy green/red lights, flares and all the ****, you are given the choice to return in VMC or to continue.

Out of Mbuji May, same procedure. (Just don't wait too much for flares as they probably don't have some :))

Thank you sir, I'll highlight that for future debates.