Flight Plan Procedure Question

[Flylo]

Was at BNA yesterday and called up WX-BRIEF to file a flight plan for our return trip.

When I got to item 3 (Aircraft Type/Special Equipment) I told the briefer, "Mooney 20G/A", which is what we were flying; an old Mooney model 20G with DME and a Mode C transponder. He immediately comes back with (rather testily I thought), "it's either a Mooney 20/P or Mooney 20/T, which is it?"

Well.... what do I know? I'm just a dumb instrument student and he's a big time regs' guy. I didn't have an AIM open in front of me then (but I do now) so I asked, "what's the difference" and he snaps, "Mode C or not Mode C", so I naturally opted for "20/P".

After finishing the filing, I told my instructor about it and he said that had happened to him on a couple of occasions too. He thought they were wrong but, like me, he didn't press the issue.

Sooo, my question is: who was right? As near as I can tell, after reading the AIM, we were right about the equipment designator however, he may have been right about us not needing to include the exact model letter (G) of the airplane. But, given all of the above, is there something out there that overrides the table I'm using which is: AIM, Chapter 5, Air Traffic Procedures, Table 5-1-2.

Thanks for any input. I realize they would just as soon never see a single engine piston airplane at the busy airports but I pay my taxes and would dearly love to tell some clown, who is taking his bout with PMS out on me, that he's completely packed with large brown rabbit pellets (in a polite, professional manner, of course).

.

 

[ekuflyer]

All of the following fall under the M20P Type Designator​

M-20, M-20/A/B/C/D/E/ F/G/J/L/R/S, Mark 21, Allegro, Eagle, Ranger, Master, Super 21, Chaparral, Executive, Statesman, Ovation, 201, 202, 205, 220, ATS, MSE, PFM (nonturbocharged engine)​

The M20T is for the turbocharged M20's ie​

M-20K/M, Encore, Bravo, 231, 252, TLS, TSE (turbocharged engine)​

See Order 7110.65P Air Traffic Control​

http://www.faa.gov/atpubs/atc/Appendices/atcapda.html

 

[avbug]

Sounds like the FSS specialist thought you sounded like a student pilot and made the assumption that you didn't know what you were talking about. When you told him you were a golf slant alpha, you told him you were a GPS or GNSS equipped aircraft (golf), and then proceeded to tell him that you had DME with a transponder (alpha).

As Golf supercedes and presupposes the presence of a transponder and DME, it's redundant, sort of like Austin Powers saying, "Please allow myself to introduce...myself."

Accordingly, the FSS specialist saw a red flag, and attempted to find out if you have mode C and DME as your suffix. The briefer doesn't care if you are a Mooney A, B, C, G, or whatever...the aircraft type identifier is all he needs, and the suffix will tell him what type of equipment you have on board. From a controller point of view, you're controlled the same weather you're a Mooney 201 or TLS or PFM or G. The controller doesn't care. The controller does care what equipment you have on board. You'll never hear a controller say, "Oh, I see. You're a G model mooney. Well, that makes all the difference in the world!" Not gonna happen.

Thanks for any input. I realize they would just as soon never see a single engine piston airplane at the busy airports but I pay my taxes and would dearly love to tell some clown, who is taking his bout with PMS out on me, that he's completely packed with large brown rabbit pellets (in a polite, professional manner, of course).

Actually, you're wrong, there. While you pay a pittance of the taxes to be used, you're given the same consideration as everyone else. You need to check your attitude regarding the FAA, controllers, etc. What a controller doesn't want is someone who isn't prepared to work in the system. It has nothing to do with you being small, single engine, or piston. If you come across on the radio as inexperienced or unsure, prepare for delaying vectors, holds, or being moved out of the way when things get busy. If you sound precise and confident on the radio, and on the phone in a briefing, you'll be surprised how much more cooperation you get.

It's nothing against you personally, or your airplane, or the fact that you're flying a G model. Have you ever heard things going rapidly and smoothly at a busy airport, and heard a private pilot chime in with "Waxahatcheelekootchie Approach, Cessna Four Six Niner Five Foxtrot Hangnail Xray is about fifteen miles to the south of your location, flying north at Seven thousand eight hundred fifty feet, with information charlie, and we'd like to land on three six at the international if you have a minute. I'm wearing a green plaid shirt with blue jeans, my sign is virgo, I prefer loose women with long hair and my turnoff is people who smoke in blue cars. Over."

The controller things to himself, "Self, here's someone who may hold things up a big. I'm sure gonna help them, but I'm gonna have to work them in," and immediately issues a vector to British Colombia via New Zealand, while he figures out what to do. You see my point? If instead the private pilot chimed in "Waxa approach, Cessna four six niner five foxtrot hangnair xray one five south with charlie, landing Baker Field," he'd get much better handling.

The same thing applies on the phone getting a briefing. If you can get on the phone and shoot through the flight plan like you're familiar with it, say something like "Hi, this is Mooney N345TC at Bigwig, I'd like to file IFR to Waxahatcheelekootchie. We're an M20 slant alpha, one five zero true, departing Bigwig at fourteen five five zulu, cruising eight thousand five hundred, routing waxa direct waba, direct wana, direct, destination Baker for six hours three five minutes, negative remarks, Twelve hours three zero minutes fuel, negative alternate, pilot's name Wilbur Wright, on file waxa flying club at (800) 555-1212, three souls, white with red, gold, yellow, and psychedelic blue trim."

This is much better than getting on the phone and saying "Howdy, y'all. This here is Jesper. How y'all doing this fine Monday morning? Ain't the weather just pretty as a peach on a nicely manicured grocery produce shelf? I do say so. I'm calling y'all cause I'm in a fix for needing to fly somewhere, and wonder if y'all might help me out. I'm gonna be flying this mooney, you see, and it's a G model with a transponder and other such stuff. I wonder if y'all would be kind enough to help me file a flight plan. You would? That's just downright gentlemanly of you. Well, here goes. We're headed out of Waxahatcheelekootchie today over to Baker, and we'd like to go IFR. That's on instruments, you know. I realize there ain't much of a cloud in sight, but that's what we want to do anyway. We're in this here mooney, and it's a g slant a model, one of the white ones with the psychadelic paint schemes, you know the ones I mean? Anyway, we're going down toward Baker today to do some crawdad fishing. I guess you could put that in the remarks. Where was I? Oh yeah, we'll be running her full out, so I guess you can put about one fifty, though beetween you and me she won't do it lessun there's a mighty strong tailwind and we're light on the gas, and for what it's worth, I don't like to go too light on the gas if you know what I mean. We're gonna be cruising about eighty five hundred feet or so, though we may do something else when the time comes, depends on what we find up there, you know? We're thinking of heading out to waxa vee-oh-arrr, then over to waba vee-oh-arr, then downto wana vee-oh-arr before we shoot on into Baker for a spell. I cain't really tell you how long we're gonna be out there, but we got plenty of gas, so just to be safe, let's say about twelve hours or so, no, make it six, cause we're gonna want dinne sometime and if we're not at Baker by then, we're just gonna land at some roadhouse and tie on the old feedbag. We got twelve hours fuel, though, and my bladder's only good for about three, so we'll see how it shakes out. I don't think we're gonna need an alternate, do you? My name? I'm wilbur wright. I know you probably don't believe me, but it was my momma's idea, and she can't do no wrong, plus I think she thought I might be a pilot, so it sorta fits. I'm flying this mooney from the waxa flying club, and they got a toll free number you can call if you get nervous when I don't show up. They're at one eight hundred five five five, one two, one two, ask for Joanne, she's mighty fine and a good one to talk to. Tell her Wilbur said hi when you call, but watch her, she'll talk your ear off and chat for yours if you give her half a mile. We're gonna have three folks on board. Do you need the animals, becuase we're each taking a blood hound, so I could say we got six on board, but I won't because we don't got that many seats and I know how you people at the FSS get all pissy over little stuff like that, so you better just put three. The airplane is real pretty, it's white with red, gold, yellow, and psychedelic blue trim. In fact, I dunno if you ever saw Fandango with that Kevin Kossner guy, but it looks just like that one that Truman Sparks was flying, except that was a cessna and we're a mooney, and we don't got no chickens or parachutes or nothing. After all, wuffo you wanna go an jump outta a perfectly good airplane, wuffo?. Now that we got the preliminaries out of the way, how bout a nice fine briefing?"

Perhaps you see my point...

 

[moxiepilot]

I initially tend to side with you that you're /A. But then that leads to the question of what you have onboard - probably VOR w/ DME capabilities...well, you ask yourself, "self, what is a VOR w/ DME?" Turns out that that's TACAN & the breifer was probably right. I'm referencing the AIM 1-1-5.

Interesting question though, kinda makes me think

Your next step will be to ask what's the difference between /A and /P

 

[moxiepilot]

I'm wearing a green plaid shirt with blue jeans, my sign is virgo, I prefer loose women with long hair and my turnoff is people who smoke in blue cars. Over."

BTW, I didn't know I actually said that.

 

[ekuflyer]

From a controller point of view, you're controlled the same weather you're a Mooney 201 or TLS or PFM or G. The controller doesn't care. The controller does care what equipment you have on board. You'll never hear a controller say, "Oh, I see. You're a G model mooney. Well, that makes all the difference in the world!" Not gonna happen.

Reference my reference above, he does care. M20p or M20t is whether or not is has a turbo.

 

[ekuflyer]

I initially tend to side with you that you're /A. But then that leads to the question of what you have onboard - probably VOR w/ DME capabilities...well, you ask yourself, "self, what is a VOR w/ DME?" Turns out that that's TACAN & the breifer was probably right. I'm referencing the AIM 1-1-5.

Interesting question though, kinda makes me think

Your next step will be to ask what's the difference between /A and /P

Tacan is entirely different than VOR w/ DME, now if there colocated it is a VORTAC but not the same thing. TACAN is a pulse system and operates in the Ultrahigh Frequency (UHF) band of frequencies. Its use requires TACAN airborne equipment and does not operate through conventional VOR equipment.

 

[moxiepilot]

Tacan is entirely different than VOR w/ DME, now if there colocated it is a VORTAC but not the same thing. TACAN is a pulse system and operates in the Ultrahigh Frequency (UHF) band of frequencies. Its use requires TACAN airborne equipment and does not operate through conventional VOR equipment.

I suppose I could have made things a little more clear, on the TACAN, VORTAC, VOR differences - but you don't see aircraft equipment suffixes for both TACAN and VORTACs. It was to support the point, not really explain the differences in navigational equipment.

Thanks however, for pointing out where I could have improved some communication...

 

[midlifeflyer]

It looks like most everyone missed ekuflyer's point. For flight plan purposes, quite some time ago, the FAA adopted a series of group type designators based on make (not necessarily model) and performance characteristics. So, for example filing "C172RG" for a Cutlass means nothing to the system. Do it on DUATS and it will ask you to fix it.

Sometimes it doesn't make a big difference over the phone. After all, Cessna 172s are so numerous that you can say "Cessna 172 RG" to the typical briefer and she will know right off the top of her head to type "C172" into the flight plan.

Individual Mooney models aren't quite as common and here are some of the Flight Plan designators for them

M10 = Mooney, Aerostar 90, Cadet Mark 10
M20P = Mooney, Aerostar-20/A/B/C/D/E/F/G/J/L/R,Ranger,SuPER21,
M20T = Mooney M-20K/M, Encore, 231, 252, Tls, Tse (Turbo)
M22 = Mooney Aircraft Mark 22, Mustang
MITE = Mooney M-18 Mite, Wee Scotsman

I can't think of any reason for a briefer to have to know the hundreds (thousands?) of individual aircraft models and what the proper flight plan system designator is.

Knowing that a "Mooney model 20G" is listed in a flight plan as "M20P" is the pilot's responsibility, not the briefer's.

All he was looking for you to say was "M20P/A"

 

[TonyC]

It looks like most everyone missed ekuflyer's point. For flight plan purposes, quite some time ago, the FAA adopted a series of group type designators based on make (not necessarily model) and performance characteristics. So, for example filing "C172RG" for a Cutlass means nothing to the system. Do it on DUATS and it will ask you to fix it.

Sometimes it doesn't make a big difference over the phone. After all, Cessna 172s are so numerous that you can say "Cessna 172 RG" to the typical briefer and she will know right off the top of her head to type "C172" into the flight plan.

Individual Mooney models aren't quite as common and here are some of the Flight Plan designators for them

M10 = Mooney, Aerostar 90, Cadet Mark 10
M20P = Mooney, Aerostar-20/A/B/C/D/E/F/G/J/L/R,Ranger,SuPER21,
M20T = Mooney M-20K/M, Encore, 231, 252, Tls, Tse (Turbo)
M22 = Mooney Aircraft Mark 22, Mustang
MITE = Mooney M-18 Mite, Wee Scotsman

I can't think of any reason for a briefer to have to know the hundreds (thousands?) of individual aircraft models and what the proper flight plan system designator is.

Knowing that a "Mooney model 20G" is listed in a flight plan as "M20P" is the pilot's responsibility, not the briefer's.

All he was looking for you to say was "M20P/A"

I think it would be hard to improve on this answer except to point out the briefer also appeared to confuse the issue of aircraft designators and equipment codes. To wit, I present:

He [said] "it's either a Mooney 20/P or Mooney 20/T, which is it?"
... I asked, "what's the difference" and he [responds], "Mode C or not Mode C", ...

I think Flylo incorrectly inserted the slant characters where the briefer didn't intend them, and so confused himself about P and T equipment codes. In other words, I believe the conversation went more like this:

He [said] "it's either a Mooney 20P or Mooney 20T, which is it?"
... I asked, "what's the difference" and he [responds], "Mode C or not Mode C", ...

The briefer apparently further confused the issue by suggesting that the difference between the type designators had something to do with avionics aboard.




Leave it to avbug to reduce it to an issue of "just another stupid pilot."