EGNX to EGKK

[Marc Sieffert]

Hi, a Controller in charge for EGNX told me that the standard route from EGNX to EGKK to enter in the flight plan is DTY3N DTY WCO MID KIDL1G and I have several questions about this:

- Normally I do not enter full SID and STARS, is this a special case?

- When I enter this route which goes on a very direct way to MID I am generally asked to fly direct KIDLI... Would it then not be better to enter KIDLI instead of WCO?

- When I got the clearance the Controller did neither pronounce the letters nor Delta tango yankee... he said something else that I did not understand... same later on for MID... are there special words or names for these two waypoints?

Thanks!

 

[Dustin Rider]

2 hours ago, Marc Sieffert said:

- Normally I do not enter full SID and STARS, is this a special case?

Nearly all large and most medium-sized airports have SIDs and STARs. Even if you don't file one, you can almost always expect to fly one if one is available.

2 hours ago, Marc Sieffert said:

- When I enter this route which goes on a very direct way to MID I am generally asked to fly direct KIDLI... Would it then not be better to enter KIDLI instead of WCO?

How you program your FMS or GPS or navigate, generally speaking, is up to you. However, what ATC has cleared you to do is what you are required to do. Technique-wise, I always set my FMS up as I was cleared and update it as needed when changes to my route occur. That way I'm protected if I lose radio communication with ATC and don't have to try to remember what it was they thought I thought they thought I was going to do.

2 hours ago, Marc Sieffert said:

- When I got the clearance the Controller did neither pronounce the letters nor Delta tango yankee... he said something else that I did not understand... same later on for MID... are there special words or names for these two waypoints?

Yes. DTN is Daventry and MID is Midhurst. If you don't have access to UK charts, you can always check to see if they're available on ChartFox.org. That's where I found the plates for both the DTN 3N and KIDLI 1G. Gentle reminder, although I'm sure you did this anyway, don't ever be afraid to ask a controller to say again or to clarify a clearance. In this case, if they were using the facility names, feel free to ask for the identifier. "London control, verify the identifier for that is Delta-Tango-November?"

[Marc Sieffert]

13 hours ago, Dustin Rider said:

Nearly all large and most medium-sized airports have SIDs and STARs. Even if you don't file one, you can almost always expect to fly one if one is available.

How you program your FMS or GPS or navigate, generally speaking, is up to you. However, what ATC has cleared you to do is what you are required to do. Technique-wise, I always set my FMS up as I was cleared and update it as needed when changes to my route occur. That way I'm protected if I lose radio communication with ATC and don't have to try to remember what it was they thought I thought they thought I was going to do.

Yes. DTN is Daventry and MID is Midhurst. If you don't have access to UK charts, you can always check to see if they're available on ChartFox.org. That's where I found the plates for both the DTN 3N and KIDLI 1G. Gentle reminder, although I'm sure you did this anyway, don't ever be afraid to ask a controller to say again or to clarify a clearance. In this case, if they were using the facility names, feel free to ask for the identifier. "London control, verify the identifier for that is Delta-Tango-November?"

Regarding the first point I am using of course SIDs and STARs for most of my IFR flights but I was just wondering why the Controller asked me to enter the full SID DTY3N and the fulls star KIDL1G. Usually I only enter the last or first waypoint in the route, in this case DTY (and not DTY3N) and KIDLI (and not KIDL1G)... So I was wondering if there are some exceptions in UK where you have to enter the fulls SID and STAR in your route...

For the second point the thing is that the Tower gave me the road DTY3N DTY WCO MID KIDL1G (which means the most direct route to MID) but the center always asked to fly through KILDI (indirect route). So I was just wondering why the tower does not provide the route DTY3N DTY KIDLI KIDL1G instead of DTY3N DTY WCO MID KIDL1G. Or if there is no Controller at EGNX if it is more appropriated to enter DTY3N DTY KIDLI KIDL1G instead of DTY3N DTY WCO MID KIDL1G since the Centers seem to prefer the indirect route via Kidli...

Cheers! 

[Trevor Hannant]

In terms of flight planning resources, especially if you're going to be flying IFR routes within the UK, I'd strongly recommend downloading the Standard Route Document from NATS Digital Datasets portal here (I'd link the document directly but the URL changes every AIRAC cycle):

https://nats-uk.ead-it.com/cms-nats/opencms/en/Publications/digital-datasets/

UK controllers using the UK Controller Plugin have access to this data within the controller software so there should be no issue with the route given by the Tower controller.  To confirm, looking at the spreadsheet for your aerodrome pairing shows:

So this confirms the routing that was passed by the Tower Controller.  The fact that MID is a point ON the STAR shouldn't be an issue, unless the Area controller wanted you to join the STAR at KIDLI to assist with sequencing against other arrivals as that's the main STAR for Gatwick traffic arriving from the North.  Generally, you would be told to "join the KIDLI1G arrival at MID" unless there was a reason for it otherwise.

On clearances, as Dustin infers, these are the names of the procedures which you get from the charts.  So if you look at the charts (I'm using Navigraph Charts here), you'll see both the identifier that you'd find in your FMC (DTY3N) and the name of the procedure which you'll be given on voice (Daventry 3 November):

As for what to enter on your flight plan - there's no need to file the SID/STAR on there - the controller was probably being helpful in giving you these but they're not needed (certainly in the UK).

Edited February 11, 2023 at 03:00 PM by Trevor Hannant