IFR Flight Plans...Enroute time?

[Singlecoil]

When filling an IFR flight plan, you must file a route that ends at an IAF for an IAP to the airport of intended landing.

You are not the only one who thinks this; I had a DE ream for not doing this on my ATP checkride, but I passed. That was the first time I had ever heard that. He had never flown commercially, but had been a DE in the Seattle area for years. He had some other strange ideas as well.

Anyway, I have flown for 1 major, 1 regional, and 1 135 carrier and we didn't and we don't file to IAF's. True, most places you go you are getting radar vectors, but even non-radar you don't have to do that. The reason is that many times you will be shooting the visual, and why would you want to waste your company's money by doing extra flying? When it is IMC at your destination, you will get a revised clearance from ATC to an IAF for an approach. Besides, how are you going to know which way an airport is landing when you are filing a flight plan hours before you are going to be arriving? You can't and you aren't expected to know. If you lose radio contact (notice I didn't say loose radio contact, that would require a screwdriver), odds are you were filed over an IAF anyway, but if you weren't, fly to the airport, go direct to an IAF of your choosing, and shoot the approach of your choosing. You guys all correctly talked about when to do all that, so I'll just reserve my comments to routing. Again, airlines don't file to IAFs, so why should you. On my ATP checkride, when I was forced to do it, approach asked me what my deal was since I listed my destination as an airport, and ended my filed route with a fix 15 miles away (it had an arc). Your filed route should always get you to the destination airport. If the last navaid is not co-located, you should end your filed route with a direct, as long as you are within operational service volume.

For those of you who insist on filing to an IAF, how do you file IFR to an airport that has no navaid and no approach? Its a cloudy day, you have a medevac patient to pick up from Bum F. Egypt. How do you file to an airport like that?

 

[Deftone45075]

Yeah, I should have noted that it is not a mandatory requirement, but a practice. And I do not always do so myself. It does make sense if you are IFR and have lost radio comm. that you have filed a route to an IAF for the approach you will use. This allows you to navigate without the use of vectors. Simply depending on conditions being VFR at your destination isn't too reliable of a practice.

I have, as you have said, never seen this in the FAR's or the AIM and agree it is not a reg. I learned of it from a captain I fly with now, who has flown for ACA and United. Apparantly it was a question brought up during his interviews.