In the UK, a lot of the general aviation airfields and airspaces in which they’re located in are uncontrolled. This means that you can take-off, land, and fly around without needing to talk to an Air Traffic Controller.
The UK CAA has published a comprehensive guide called the Flight Planning Guide, which goes all into the requirements and details.
What I aim to cover here in this article, are the practical tips to filing and modifying and flight plans for beginners. I’ll use an example for a cross-country flight that I did to France.
When is a Flight Plan Required to be filed?
– Flights in Class A controlled airspace
– Flights within controlled airspace in IMC or at night
– Flights crossing the UK FIR Boundary
– Flights in Class B to D* (IFR or VFR)
* If you’ve ever done a Zone Transit, during a PPL lesson. You probably didn’t file a flight plan beforehand, but instead, used the following phraseology around 10 mins or so before entering controlled airspace.
[Your callsign, Aircraft type, Point of departure and destination, Present position and altitude, flight rules (VFR or IFR), “request basic/traffic service and zone transit”.]
This is more than sufficient in the UK. You don’t need to file an official “paper” flight plan, and neither is it likely that a major airport like Luton or Stansted would even bother looking at your flight plan if you weren’t landing there.
Why Learn to File a Flight Plan?
Even though you’ll most likely not need to file a flight plan if you’re simply doing time building or local flights. You should learn to do one. Because there could come a time you want to fly further afield, like to another country, and in this case you’ll need to know how to file a flight plan.
It’s very good practice to get the hang of this if you have aspirations to become a commercial pilot. Then flight plans will likely be an essential part of your job.
Ways to file a flight plan – Flight Planning Software
In this photo of me below, if you have sharp eyes, you can see that I’m using the SkyDemon application on my iPad. It’s a very useful and popular application for GA pilots in the UK and Europe, with moving maps and flight planning tools.
It does have the ability to submit flight plans in a few taps without needing you to fill out the flight plan form, based on your route, aircraft and other details you provided.
Despite this, I still decided to learn to file one manually during my time building phase on my first cross-border flight.
The reason being, doing it manually teaches you how flight plans work, and is something you’ll have to do especially for an IR skills test, which requires you to fly into controlled airspace.
The CAA Flight Planning Guide recommends flightplanningonline.co.uk, which is the Afpex software. The software only works on Windows and Linux computers as of writing, and you need to register for it . I personally didn’t enjoy the layout and have had trouble logging in. This would make things very inconvenient in case I had to make any last minute changes.
I also didn’t fancy carrying around a laptop in order to file and modify flight plans, and I wanted a mobile application, something that I could access online and ideally from a smartphone or tablet.
After a bit of research and use, I ended up discovering and using two different applications: EuroFPL and AutoRouter.
1. EuroFPL
EuroFPL has a website and a mobile app as of writing this and gives you up to 10 free filings per month. What is very useful is that there’s a flight plan builder and you can see routes that have been filed. Once you submit a flight plan and receive an acknowledgement, you can delay, change, cancel, and report arrival.
When you fly to a towered aerodrome, they’ll likely have your flight plan and be expecting you. In this case, you shouldn’t need to report arrival, the tower will do it for you. However, when flying anywhere that’s unmanned, make sure you close your flight plan to avoid a search and rescue operation from being initiated to come after you.
When I did my first flight from Turweston (EGBT) to Le Touquet (LFAT). I made my own routing, with the intention to do a zone transit of Luton Airport’s (EGGW) airspace, overhead the airport.
Here is an image of the flight plan that I actually used. For the routing, I would have probably chosen a navaid, instead of EGGW, next time. Now that I’m flying commercially, we fly by IFR and I’ve seen that all our routes, go via waypoints, and airways.
But considering this is a VFR flight plan, I’m not too sure if Luton Airport even looked at it. Once I got airborne, I still needed to contact and get permission to cross their controlled airspace. Which they kindly granted.
Another point to note, obviously as this was an international flight, I needed to submit a GAR to let the UK Home Office and French Immigration know I’d be crossing the border, and I also ringed up Le Touquet (LFAT), to see if a PPR (Prior Permission Required) was needed. They advised me that only a flight plan was needed.
Everything worked really well that day, I had a really smooth trip there and back, and it’s something I highly recommend you consider.
2. Autorouter
The other tool I used to submit a flight that I found very good was Autorouter. I used it for an IFR flight plan when I was preparing for my Multi-Engine IR exam in the UK.
Part of the IR exam requires that you enter controlled airspace, which means climbing into Class A airspace. That required me to file a Flight Plan beforehand.
From Redhill (EGKR), I decided to route via the Detling (DET) VOR to enter Class A controlled airspace on my way to Southend (EGMC) for an instrument approach.
What I found very cool about Autorouter is that it has a route validator and comes with a complete briefing pack with weather, METARs/TAFs, and NOTAMs for your destination and departure aerodrome, and there’s also a Telegram channel for you to get updates and make changes to your flight plan as needed, which was very handy to have.
Nowadays, as I mentioned, there are all-in-one applications like SkyDemon, Rocket Route, and Foreflight to do all the hard work for you.
Whichever method you use, I hope this guide inspires you to fly further and do something different. Most importantly, I hope you have learnt something that you can use in your flying.
Disclaimer:
Use this knowledge and verify everything you do beforehand. I won’t be responsible for any mistakes and losses as a result of it. Safe and Happy Flights!