Flight Plan

Flight Plan

Flight plans are documents filed by pilots or a Flight Dispatcher with the local Civil Aviation Authority (e.g. FAA in the USA) prior to departure. Flight plan format is specified in the ICAO Doc 4444. They generally include basic information such as departure and arrival points, estimated time en route, alternate airports in case of bad weather, type of flight (whether instrument flight rules or visual flight rules), the pilot's information, number of people on board and information about the aircraft itself. In most countries, flight plans are required for flights under IFR, but may be optional for flying VFR unless crossing international borders. Flight plans are highly recommended, especially when flying over inhospitable areas, such as water, as they provide a way of alerting rescuers if the flight is overdue. In the United States and Canada, when an aircraft is crossing the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), either an IFR or a special type of VFR flight plan called a DVFR flight plan must be filed (the "D" is for Defense).

For IFR flights, flight plans are used by air traffic control to initiate tracking and routing services. For VFR flights, their only purpose is to provide needed information should search and rescue operations be required, or for use by air traffic control when flying in a "Special Flight Rules Area".

Read more about Flight Plan:  Routing Types, SIDs and STARs, Special Use Airspace, Flight Levels, Alternate Airports, Fuel, Flight Plan Timeline, Other Flight Planning Considerations, Description of Flight Plan Blocks (FAA), Some Terms and Acronyms Used in Flight Planning

Famous quotes containing the words flight and/or plan:

    “It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy’s edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create “one world.” Instead of one world, we have “star wars,” and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet’s dead.”
    —Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

    “The inference is, that God has restated the superiority of the West. God always does like that when a thousand white people surround one dark one. Dark people are always “bad” when they do not admit the Divine Plan like that. A certain Javanese man who sticks up for Indonesian Independence is very lowdown by the papers, and suspected of being a Japanese puppet.”
    —Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)