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2 Answers

FAA flight plan.

Asked by: 6383 views Airspace, FAA Regulations, Instrument Rating

How long before the ATD, am I able to request an IFR clearance ?

Also, How long does the ATC keeps the IFR flight plan in their system?

Is there legal FAA reference mentioning above materials?

 

Connor.

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2 Answers



  1. John D Collins on Nov 04, 2016

    The times between when you can file an IFR flightplan in the US vary by the filing service, but in general flightplans can be filed in the US 24 hours prior to departure to 5 minutes prior to departure. Some services limit this further or provide caching for flightplans for much longer periods. For example Leidos (they operate the CONUS FSS) allows flightplans to be filed up to 27 days in advance and with as little as 5 minutes prior to ETD. Flightplans in the ATC computer can be filed up to 24 hours in advance. In the case of Leidos, they transmit cached flightplans at ETD – 3 hours. DUATS.COM does this at ETD-2 hours. The ATC computer prints the flightplan requests 30 minutes prior to departure and if never utilized, they are deleted from the system two hours after ETD. Filing a flight plan thru ForeFlight and Leidos, I have been able to do this after landing and while the student taxies back to the departure runway, the clearance is available.

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  2. atcfinest on Nov 21, 2016

    One thing to add to what Mr. Collins wrote (excellent response, I must say), if you know you filed hours ago and your greater than 30 mins prior from your proposed time, you can ask clearance delivery to push up your “p time” so it prints out. Some instructors in the tower teach trainees to tell pilots to wait until 30 mins prior to the proposed time, others teach to look for in the system and ask if they want to push the proposed time up. I will say that sometimes Clearance Delivery can be backed up with flight strips which is why the 30 min window is good.

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