Hello!

Tim, how often have you tried putting an airport ID in the route field of a flight plan? I have done it myself many times (VFR mainly but also IFR). They were all flightplans addresssed to Eurocontrol. None of them has been rejected for this reason yet.

Have you talked to an actual live controller about this? I have, several times to different controllers (wherever the opportunity arose in the past 1-2 years). None of them have told me otherwise. In fact, they all confirmed that they prefer published names over coordinates.

-- Chris.

Tim, how often have you tried putting an airport ID in the route field of a flight plan? I have done it myself many times (VFR mainly but also IFR). They were all flightplans addresssed to Eurocontrol. None of them has been rejected for this reason yet.

I did that before posting my previous message. The flight plan was rejected.

Very interesting indeed. I tried to access international flightplans of mine from last year off the homebriefing server but they weren't accessible anymore. However, the next one I file I'll post here just to prove that I wasn't dreaming. The only difference I can see is that mine didn't have the DCT acronym inserted in the route section. But I think it's doubtful this would make a difference.

-- Chris.

You must use DCT or a route designator for each segment of the route (except when you use geographical coordinates), otherwise the flight plan will again be rejected.

The added difficulty of parsing a route description without DCT would be negligible. (At least as long as it is impossible for an ATS route and a significant point to have the same designator.)