Dear Skydemon Team,

VFR flight plans don't (usually) go through a verification process such as IFR flight plans do. It is only a rough plausibility check which does not prohibit using landmark/cities names in the route section. The responsible controller gets the flight plan and reads it as it was filed. I don't think they are automatically displayed graphically. Hence, for a human, it makes much more sense to use establised and published (in the AIP) names instead of hard to decipher lat-lon coordinates. That is the reason that many countries want to see them used on VFR flight  plans.

I agree‌ that IF VFR flight plans were treated like their IFR brethren it would make much more sense to use machine interpretable lat-lon coordinates. Since that is not the case (can't speak for all countries) some countries INSIST that landmark/cities be used as identifiers in place of geographical coordinates.

--Chris.‌‌

In Norway, at least I, was learned to file VFR FPL with names of the cities/landmarks used in the navigation plan. 

Ckurz7000,
‌
‌In the UK, the CAA/NATS provide a standalone program called AFPEX in order to allow pilots to submit flight plans into the "system".
E‌very "critical" AFPEX field, that is completed by the user, is checked for syntax and FPL transmission is blocked until all errors are corrected.

T‌he French and Belgian authorities also have equivalents to AFPEX that also do syntax checking before allowing FPl transmission.
T‌ony
‌

Sure they are. Many countries machine-read them to create electronic flight strips, and some countries even respond to them with an accept/reject email. Machine reading can only work to create a graphical route from a flightplan if the route field is syntactically correct.

BTW, a VFR FPL is not checked by any filing system, in contrast to IFR FPLs.

-- Chris.

The solution is for countries to create five-letter identifiers if they want to ask pilots to report somewhere. It's simple, and most countries do it.

Hi Daniel,
I‌ am not familiar with country specific (Austrian) FPL formats (if one exists) but was referring to the ICAO standard format for FPLs.
Take a look here:
https://files.eurofpl.eu/originalfpl/pdfs/EuroFPL-ICAO_Flightplan_Form_Basics-latest.pdf
S‌pecifically page 4 and highlighted point ‌(1) - ROUTE.

I‌ can't see how a City Nam‌e can be inserted into the Route section (15) and not be rejected by the FPL checking system.

R‌egards

T‌ony‌ 
‌.



‌‌

Not so in Austria, because of this i've made that topic ;-)
At least i have even a written confirmation from austro control.

Greetings
Daniel‌‌‌