Flying through Canadian airspace

In a previous article, "Denny" said:
"OK, it's filed... Hayuv a nice day.", she chirped...
Slight pause on my part (the deer in the headlights look, my son, DL,
later dryly mentioned) as I was well into the role of mentor and
smoothly showing my son how it is done by a pro I thought ....
"Uhhh, I didn't get a squawk."
"Oh, I can't give you a squawk, ATC will assign that when you open your
flight plan."

Most of this story seems to indicate that you expect a VFR flight plan to
work exactly the same as an IFR flight plan. It never has, and post 9/11
it's been even worse for cross border operations.

Even before 9/11, you *always* have had to open and close the VFR flight
plan with FSS, and request flight following from ATC. They're separate
functions. ROC Approach always insisted that you have a flight plan on
file before they'd give you flight following, and when I'd mention that
here people accused me of lying or being mistaken. Without the VFR flight
plan, they'd refuse to hand you off but turn you lose and maybe give you a
frequency to contact for the next facility. Even with the flight plan,
you'd sometimes get turned loose. When NavCanada was just taking over in
Canada, Toronto would refuse to take VFR hand-offs from Buffalo or
Rochester, and you'd either have to dive beneath their airspace or go
around.

When I went to places in Canada outside of Toronto, it was nice because
Canadian towers open and close VFR flight plans. But I never quite got
the hang of getting flight following from Ottawa - they'd always just turn
me lose and then I'd try to raise Wheeler Sack as I got closer to the
border. I've been told that the secret is to file a "Controlled VFR"
flight plan, but I've never tried it because I got my IFR rating before I
got a chance.

Post 9/11, you still have to be on a flight plan of some sort to cross the
border, and now you have to be talking to ATC as well. So I just find it
a ton easier to file IFR rather than deal with all "will he hand me off,
or won't he, only his bartender knows for sure" crap.


--
Paul Tomblin http://xcski.com/blogs/pt/
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea -- massive,
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