Flight Plan - Cruise Altitude

[Matt Harkin 1121089]

Hi

 

I've recently joined VATSIM and attempted a maiden flight yesterday. I followed the guidelines from the "Online IFR Planning" docomeent (which was really informative) and checked the standard routes, which looked like this:

 

EGKK LAM MC 85 N57 TNT DAYNE2A EGCC

 

As I understand it, MC is the minimum altitude ("minimum controlled"?) and 85 is FL85 which is the maximum, so I duly filed my cruise altitude as FL80. However, ATC asked me to re-file the flight plan using FL120 for cruise altitude, which is above the maximum.

 

I'm a little confused...is it routine for ATC to modify the published minima and maxima or did I fail to follow some other procedure of which I was unaware. Or is the VATSIM world just slightly different from the real world as defined in the standard routes docomeent.

 

If possible, I'd like to get it right next time without having to make clearance delivery do any extra work.

[Wycliffe Barrett]

Hi

 

I've recently joined VATSIM and attempted a maiden flight yesterday. I followed the guidelines from the "Online IFR Planning" docomeent (which was really informative) and checked the standard routes, which looked like this:

 

EGKK LAM MC 85 N57 TNT DAYNE2A EGCC

 

As I understand it, MC is the minimum altitude ("minimum controlled"?) and 85 is FL85 which is the maximum, so I duly filed my cruise altitude as FL80. However, ATC asked me to re-file the flight plan using FL120 for cruise altitude, which is above the maximum.

 

 

Hi Matt

 

No need for confusion you are correct, in as much you read the route correctly, I suspect that the controller might have wanted to give you a higher Fl because of the aircraft cl[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ification you was flying, although that is not totally required. If you file a flightplan and its correct as yours certainly seemed, I can't understand why the controller altered it so dramatically.

 

Perhaps the best option would have been to ask the controller for an explanation. As fars I can see you did nothing wrong.

 

Perhaps someone lese might com ein at this point and add to the discussion.

 

Wycliffe

[Matt Harkin 1121089]

Thanks Wycliffe.

 

The aircraft I was flying was a Beech Baron 58.

 

For this aircraft, maybe I should have chosen the alternative standard route which starts at base FL105:

 

EGKK LAM 105 245 N57 WELIN T420 TNT DAYNE2A EGCC

 

On a separate note, am I correct in thinking that there are 2 VATSIM forums...one for vatsim.net (international?) and one for community.vatsim-uk.org? If so, would it be better to post on the latter since most of my questions are likely to be based on UK/European flying?

[Wycliffe Barrett]

Matt

 

You are correct, VATSIM Uk is the far better option for UK related questions.

 

Back to your FL query, Flight level 85 for the Beech would be fine, you could have of course gone for the higher FL, I think the controller was probably more interested in getting you on the higher airway for what reason I am not sure as the one in your plan was perfectly fine.

 

Some controllers do have problems controlling GA aircraft on IFR routes, you should have seen the debate earlier this year when one of our members was doing this in a cessna, caused mayhem.

 

As a result a number of GA pilots started a campaign of flying GA with IFR flightplans. It was jolley good fun to watch as some controllers got themselves into a right paddy over how to control them.

 

Wycliffe

[Matt Harkin 1121089]

Hilarious!

 

But what's the issue with GA? Surely GA aircraft fly IFR in the real world? Is it simply that they travel slower than the other traffic and clog up the system?

 

I'll use UK forums in future...but thanks for replying to this posting.

[Wycliffe Barrett]

Matt

 

The problem was that not many controllers in the UK knew how to offer control to GA on IFR flightplans. The main reason for this is tha the focus of training for controllers is IFR first and then VFR second, some regions do a lot better on VFR training as they have particular issue's with VFR.

 

For example Bristol and Cardiff spend quite sometime mentoring on VFR traffic because of the proximity of the airfields to each other and also Glouscter being just up the road so to speak, which is the major VFR airfield of the South West.

 

Bristol has numerous VRP's and Cardiff has published VFR routes in and out. So the level of training for each airfield is high. We also as a by product of this spend sometime on training controllers as each airfield offers a LARS service

 

Wycliffe

[Matt Harkin 1121089]

Thanks Wycliffe...that's worth remembering if or when I start to fly VFR. At the moment, I'm trying to concentrate on IFR, partly because I've been reading up about STARs and SIDs (and don't want to waste all that effort) and partly because I was under the impression that radio work might be more difficult if you have to decide for yourself who to speak to, when and where. My twisted logic says that IFR radio transmissions are more frequent but at least ATC always tell you what to do and contact you when necessary. Probably a rubbish theory but what the hell.

 

I had my second flight today...took off fine, executed the SID fine, navigated to the STAR and hold fine, then got in a tangle with the radio...damn thing wouldn't send/receive text to UNICOM and tower simultaneously even though BOTH was selected on the radio stack. The ATCO kept saying "contact me" on private chat, which I did (on tower frequency), but there was no response. Finally switched to COM2 and hey presto the controller started replying. But by then, I was in a complete mess and made a bog of the approach.

 

All good fun though.