Internet flight plan filing coming soon

[IO540]

http://flightplanningonline.co.uk/

This is a new service, for UK resident pilots, and they are collecting applications at present.

The form asks for a CAA license number but I gather FAA pilots are allowed too but they will get a longer verification process in due course, presumably to check they are UK resident.

There will be NO geographical restrictions on the start and end points of the flight plan so not just in the UK.

[autothrottle]

The old system was far better, and this one has cost people their jobs.

[172driver]

Isn't that the same service homebriefing.com have been providing for years?

[fernytickles]

Why do they have to have your licence number?

Have been using fltplan.com and prior to that, good old FSS to file for years and never once required to give a licence number.... Ditto when I've filed a flight plan in Canada.

And prior to that, work flight plans on the UK would never have our licence numbers...

Why do you have to be a UK resident? Lets say I came home for a couple of weeks, wanted to go flying and decided to file. I'm British, but currently non-resident, with both US & UK licences. What does residency have to do with flight planning?

[IO540]

The old system was far better, and this one has cost people their jobs.

What old system? Can you elaborate on the exact job loss problem?

The UK has never provided a free web based flight plan filing service. The only service I know of has been www.homebriefing.com (run by Vienna ATC) which charges Euro 37/year flat rate for the first 10 flight plans. HB does work and I've been using it for years, as have many others.

Why do they have to have your licence number?

My guess is that since this will enable people to file flight plans via a direct internet gateway to the AFTN, and thus could be used to file bogus flight plans, they want to be sure that the login details go to a real pilot and not some hacker.

They don't actually need the CAA license # because you could for example be flying under a German PPL, or an FAA PPL/CPL etc. But they will want to verify your ID.

This is not the same thing as faxing a flight plan to Heathrow, where if some tw*t faxed a load of bogus ones then recipient will just bin them. I have heard a rumour that the services such as Heathrow may disappear in the future and we will all need to use online sites like this. Personally, I have never used anything but the internet - it is virtually mandatory already for notams so there is nothing new to learn.

The whole issue of online flight plan filing has been neck deep in politics for as long as anybody can remember. The speculation has always been that the powers to be dragged their heels because of the abuse fear. The UK notam site www.ais.org.uk has been thought to always have been capable of the function but it was never implemented.

This dragging of heels is what enabled Homebriefing to start up and make money with a premium rate service - for doing nothing more than they were doing anyway, but they got some software which links their web interface to the flight plan entry desk and does the addressing via some sort of address database (which is tricky for VFR).

[Foxbat01]

Reading the AIP, as one does when it's wet and windy outside, flight plan addressing is covered in ENR_1_11

For VFR pilots the obvious addresses are for Departure, Destination and Alternates but also additionall addresses for FIR.

For IFR it's the two addresses for IFPS and that's it.

[Maoraigh1]

Problem signing up electronically

I've just tried to sign up. When I click "submit" my Vista laptop does not use my Tesco email, but tries to set up a new connection, demanding information which I do not have,even if my tesco email is open. Looks like print out and post.

[youngskywalker]

Or if I recall correctly from my ATC days, just the one collective address for the Euro IFPS zone is required if IFR: EGZYIFPS

[Maoraigh1]

Problem signing up 2

Saved the filled-in form. Copied the address that shows at the bottom when you hover over submit. Tried to send the Microsoft Office OneNote Section file as an attachment to that address, using my Tesco email. System showed an error message.
I notice I cannot post, only fax a copy.

[S-Works]

Applied. Form worked fine for me.

Now to wait and see what we get. Seems liek a good idea to me and will make life a lot easier for those of use filing flight plans all the time.

[FlyUK73]

I'm one of the NATS personnel involved in the project, if you have any queries, feel free to ask and I'll answer as best I can.



Edit: Thanks for changing your link IO540.

[wsmempson]

I've just applied for this and have just received this reply:

"Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your application for an AFPEx account. The system is now in operation and we are concentrating on migrating aerodromes and companies who are currently on legacy systems, which are due to cease. The timescale for GA pilots going onto the system is expected to be in early May. Please be assured that we will handle your application on a strictly "first come first served" basis and you will be contacted in due course. Your patience is appreciated

Kind regards,
NATS AFPEx Team"

In the meantime, I'll carry on using the superb French system, OLIVIA - which has so far worked pretty flawlessly for me over the last 2 years.

[autothrottle]

IO540,

Exactly how long have you been filing FPL's in the UK? It appears from your reply not very long , or if you have then paid little attention to the procedures to be followed and badly understood the flight planning system.

The old system I refer to was by submitting the flight plan to a FBU where professional flight planners would correct mistakes, something that at least 40 per cent had, correctly address it, initiate overdue action, provide advice and as ATC professionals made a system where the average PPL who has relatively little flight planning training, work.

I know as a licenced Professional pilot and having worked in a major fbu for 15 years. The new system has to be adressed by the pilot and is not checked for accuracy( something important if someone ditches 28 miles from start point) to anywhere the levels pre internet filing. The reason? The workers who manned the FBU's are nearly all gone. Not long and there will be none. To save money.

Believe me , I have relied on FPL'S submitted by pilots who have no experience in flight planning who file it 10 minutes before departure and then get airborne without checking its been processed. I feel there is now more room than ever for someone to go overdue and not get noticed.

[IO540]

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.

[david viewing]

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.

Not everyone knows that. Especially not the chap I heard the other day on London Information anxious to close his plan in the air before landing. But the real situation is worse. The only reason, IMHO, for VFR FPLs in the UK is for border crossings. These plans are even required between Schengen countries.

Fortunately there are foreign sites (Olivia, Netherlands AIS) that accept UK arrival or destination and allow you to file online without having to understand addressing or give a licence number.

[IO540]

Fortunately there are foreign sites (Olivia, Netherlands AIS) that accept UK arrival or destination and allow you to file online without having to understand addressing or give a licence number.

It's a good question as to how much one should get hung up about this supposed limitation, but none of these sites offer (or guarantee) to accept flight plans wholly outside their own country.

I vaguely recall the Netherlands one actually says they don't. Olivia, I have never used.

It may well work in practice but I would not go off on a long trip abroad without being sure I can file a flight plan somehow, sitting in the hotel the night before.

Some pilots have more slack and they can mess around. I see them hanging around airports, getting weather, area notams maybe, filing flight plans by filling in the forms by hand.

I guess the online services (homebriefing.com being the only one currently running that I know of, but I believe there are others well higher up the price scale, Jepp included) are aimed at pilots who like to be all sorted by the time they leave for the airport and they just want to walk up to the plane and go. Historically this is what one paid a handling agent to do but nowadays it's possible to do it all oneself - in civilised parts of Europe anyway. And most GA airfields thankfully don't have handling agents (yet )

[pelagic]

"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)."

IO540 - just to clarify, if you use homebriefing to file a VFR flightplan for, say, LFPG to LEMD, what addresses are used by homebriefing? (ie - who receives a copy of your FPL?)

[mm_flynn]

Originally Posted by pelagic

IO540 - just to clarify, if you use homebriefing to file a VFR flightplan for, say, LFPG to LEMD, what addresses are used by homebriefing? (ie - who receives a copy of your FPL?)

I don't know but used to assume that homebriefing addressed 'correctly' until I had a Y plan go wrong. My transition to VFR was supposed to be around Dover (I was struggling to get it accepted out of Venice and Ying at DVR made it work??) coming in from KONAN. I got my SMSed ACK and a small amendment - then flew a much more Southerly route until I was handed over to London by French ATC, due South of Gatwick, 40 miles still to run to the French coast (i.e. 150 miles and 90 degrees from where I flight planned to change to VFR)

Something went wrong somewhere because London's normally cheerful greeting was 'Who?... Where are you??... I don't have a strip...Is that you squawking 2601?... Damn that's nowhere near my airspace... standby let me find someone for you to talk to'

[IO540]

IO540 - just to clarify, if you use homebriefing to file a VFR flightplan for, say, LFPG to LEMD, what addresses are used by homebriefing? (ie - who receives a copy of your FPL?)

For IFR, they send the FP to the standard Eurocontrol address and it then gets distributed in seconds along the route.

For VFR, I have had conflicting replies from them.

On one occassion they told me that they send it to

- departure
- destination
- enroute FIRs (but only if I specified a waypoint in each such FIR)

and the ends addressing was modified according to the old ATC addressing manual e.g. if going to LEAX the FP would get sent to LEMG.

On another occassion they bluntly told me they address it to the departure ARO and let them do the addressing.

I think both approaches are correct - depending on where you decide your responsibility lies

VFR flight plans (over long distances) have always been problematic, because whoever does the addressing often gets it wrong. On one occassion, I filed four FPs (for a long VFR trip to Spain) and only the 1st one didn't get lost.

I've heard various amazing tales, e.g. the /DOF (date of flight) parameter is implemented by the filing office sticking it on a nail in the wall and checking the nail every morning for FPs that come up on that day and filing those. Homebriefing appear to implement /DOF (for VFR anyway) by keeping the FP in their database and injecting it into the AFTN on the appropriate day.

ISTM that Homebriefing's failures have been mostly due to errors in their computer version of the flight plan addressing manual.

It's a mess really.

However I have not filed a long international VFR FP (UK-Italy kind of thing) since 2005. The IFR ones don't seem to get lost.

[TotalBeginner]

The old system I refer to was by submitting the flight plan to a FBU where professional flight planners would correct mistakes, something that at least 40 per cent had, correctly address it, initiate overdue action, provide advice and as ATC professionals made a system where the average PPL who has relatively little flight planning training, work.

I haven't seen or used the new AFPEx, but I would doubt very much if it's a simple "mask", whereby you fill in the blanks and hit submit. I would guess that the fields must conform to standard FPL syntax or it will be rejected. Maybe FlyUK73 can comment on this?

As for filing a FPL at ETD -10, surely a web based system could quite easily prevent such a late FPL submission? With the old system, there's nothing to stop someone sending a fax, whenever they like!