Temporarily deviating from IFR

I take it there's no such thing as "suspend IFR."
You are correct. Once you cancel, you have to refile.

If you are VMC and expect to remain so, you could request "VFR on top"
and a course deviation. If they don't have to hold a hard altitude for
you, they may be more flexible in granting deviations.

Jose
--
Get high on gasoline: fly an airplane.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

"Newps" wrote in message
. ..


Mxsmanic wrote:
You're flying happily over the desert in your small plane, in bright,
clear
weather, on your IFR flight plan. You notice a plume of smoke a short
distance away at your nine o'clock, and looking more carefully, you see
what
looks like a stranded car with some people standing around it. You'd
like to
investigate just to see if it might be someone who needs help.

Given that you're on an IFR flight plan and under ATC control, how do you
handle this? I presume you can't just tell ATC that you're going to
swing
south and drop to 2000 feet for a while to check something out. Do you
ask
ATC to vector you towards the stranded car? Do you cancel IFR to go take
a
look? Is there a way of suspending IFR temporarily so that you can leave
your
planned route and altitude and check out the source of the smoke? What's
the
procedure?

On a related note (whence the crosspost to r.a.p.), has this ever
happened to
you? That is, have you ever seen something that looked like a possible
case
of people in distress on the ground and decided to go over and take a
look
and/or report it to ATC?




Sure, you can....well nevermind.

Oh Yea, the old "Burning Car in the Desert" trick.

Al G

Mxsmanic wrote in
:

Can you reactivate an IFR flight plan after cancelling it and continue
from some point within the plan, or do you have to file a brand new
one if you want to return to IFR.

I take it there's no such thing as "suspend IFR."

Certainly not in those words. There *is* such a thing as a compound
flight plan. This is used where you want to transition from IFR to VFR
or VFR to IFR at a certain point. However, the very few folks I know
who have ever tried to file such a thing have always run into problems
(controller doesn't understand, thing gets munged in the computer,
etc.). Usually easier to file TWO flight plans, one VFR and one IFR,
that swap off at some point. Or, more commonly, just request the change
in the air.

There is also a /D+xx that can be filed. It's used (at least in theory)
when you want to "suspend" the IFR flight for a few minutes at an
airport, usually to pick up or drop off a passenger. You file the route
something like CWK V17 TPL/D+15 V17 ACT where TPL is the Temple Texas
airport and you are going to be on the ground 15 minutes or less.

The problem is, it almost never works. Controllers have forgotten what
it means, and they don't like to have to keep the airspace sanitized
while you are on the ground. They would again much prefer you to simply
file TWO flight plans (in this case, one to TPL and one from TPL).

For the case you described that started this thread, the usual case is
simply to request deviations as needed. But IFR is really *not* for
sightseeing. [That's why airlines fly IFR always, now. They used to
always "sightsee" in good weather, until the day two of them ran into
each other over the Grand Canyon. After that the rules changed.]

-----------------------------------------------
James M. Knox
TriSoft ph 512-385-0316
1300 Koenig Lane West fax 512-371-5716
Suite 200
Austin, Tx 78756
-----------------------------------------------

James M. Knox wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote in
:


Can you reactivate an IFR flight plan after cancelling it and continue
from some point within the plan, or do you have to file a brand new
one if you want to return to IFR.

I take it there's no such thing as "suspend IFR."


Certainly not in those words.




You guys sure make this hard. The IFR system is not that rigid.

Newps writes:

You guys sure make this hard. The IFR system is not that rigid.

But there does seem to be a gulf between what is theoretically and formally
allowed and what actually works in practice.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

James M. Knox wrote:

Mxsmanic wrote in
:


Can you reactivate an IFR flight plan after cancelling it and continue
from some point within the plan, or do you have to file a brand new
one if you want to return to IFR.

I take it there's no such thing as "suspend IFR."

snipped reply...

For the case you described that started this thread, the usual case is
simply to request deviations as needed. But IFR is really *not* for
sightseeing. [That's why airlines fly IFR always, now. They used to
always "sightsee" in good weather, until the day two of them ran into
each other over the Grand Canyon. After that the rules changed.]

I was on a commercial flight years ago with an
active COM feed to the SLF headsets. Ours and
several other planes were picking their way through
a storm front and were continually requesting
10-20 degree right and left deviations to avoid
weather.

I was on a commercial flight years ago with an
active COM feed to the SLF headsets. Ours and
several other planes were picking their way through
a storm front and were continually requesting
10-20 degree right and left deviations to avoid
weather.

Sure. That's what the Garmin 396/496 is for. The big boys have on-board
radar, of course. When there are storms about the frequency is full of
such requests.

Mxsmanic,

But there does seem to be a gulf between what is theoretically and formally
allowed and what actually works in practice.


Not at all. It's all exactly the way it is in your game. No difference
between simulation and real life, remember?

--
Thomas Borchert (EDDH)

Thomas Borchert writes:

Not at all. It's all exactly the way it is in your game. No difference
between simulation and real life, remember?

The gulf I discussed applied entirely to real life, independent of any
simulation.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

"Mxsmanic" wrote in message
...
You're flying happily over the desert in your small plane, in bright,
clear
weather, on your IFR flight plan. You notice a plume of smoke a short
distance away at your nine o'clock, and looking more carefully, you see
what
looks like a stranded car with some people standing around it. You'd like
to
investigate just to see if it might be someone who needs help.

So just tell ATC what you've seen and tell them you'd like to go have a
look. If, for whatever reason, they can't accommodate you, they'll probably
ask you to tell them as accurately as possible where the incident has
happened so they can alert the police or whoever. If, on the other hand,
they can handle a deviation, they'll co-ordinate this deviation with you.
They'll leave getting there up to you - don't expect them to vector you
there (let's face it, they know exactly where you are right now, but the
chances are you'll be telling them something like "about five miles to the
northwest", and they can't exactly give you an accurate course).

If the problem appears potentially serious (e.g. there's a car on fire
upside-down in a field, thus implying that it mightn't be visible from the
road, so the emergency services mightn't be aware) then declare a PAN. The
controller can then give you the required priority, and other pilots on
frequency will be aware of what's going on as they'll hear it's a PAN call.

On a related note (whence the crosspost to r.a.p.), has this ever happened
to
you? That is, have you ever seen something that looked like a possible
case
of people in distress on the ground and decided to go over and take a look
and/or report it to ATC?

Well, it happened to me (and presumably everyone else) on my PPL radio exam.
Actually, what I mean is that the "PAN" part of the oral exam involved me
supposedly spotting a life-raft in the water below me and reporting it to
ATC via a PAN call.

I've never had something like this for real, but there was one occasion when
I knew an instructor from our club was considering sending someone on a solo
navex in a particular area, and once I got airborne for my own flight I saw
that the conditions differed markedly from the forecast/actuals report. I
asked ATC to relay a message to the club to say that the weather down there
wasn't up to a solo student on a navex, which they kindly did.

David C