On Thu, 10 Aug 2006 15:31:59 -0600, Newps wrote:



Ed Rasimus wrote:

Trust me, they departed their home station on an IFR flight plan.

No, they do not always do this.

Can you give me a basis for this assurance? I flew for the USAF for 23
years from Williams, Nellis, Luke, Davis-Monthan, Holloman, Randolph,
Eglin, McConnell, George, Patrick, and a few other spots in between. I
did it from the perspective a student to IP to flight commander to ops
officer and with a bit of staff time thrown in on the side.

I will agree that they do not "always" do it, but the exceptions are
very few and far between. For most scheduled training flights, the
aircrew isn't even involved in the filing of the flight plan behind
the "signing out" at the duty desk. The option to file VFR isn't
available for routine operations. It "could be done" but generally
isn't.

If you have some new insights, I'd sure appreciate them.

And
when their "merry way" got them back to home station, they were
handled by approach control and either routed into an instrument
recovery or enroute descent to VFR traffic.

Right they descended to their airport like they descended into mine. VFR.

Sorry, no. Go to any military base and you'll find local operating
procedures that specify departures from the base and recoveries. Those
procedures are designed with ATC coordination and proceed from fix to
fix along a specified route of flight. This routing allows for
unimpeded operation whether the current weather is IMC or VMC.
Anything else would be unworkable.

Consider for a moment, at Holloman we had four AT-38 squadrons flying
on average 130 sorties per training day and three F-15 squadrons
running about 60 sorties/day plus various drone operations. The
intensity of operations simply doesn't allow for random VFR roaming to
funnel traffic in and out of the airdrome.

Again, if you've got some direct experience in this area beyond
opinion gleaned from watching pop-up traffic at your station, I'm
willing to listen.



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com