Welcome Guest. Sign in or Signup

2 Answers

FAA flight plan.

Asked by: 6355 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.

Ace Any FAA Written Test!
Actual FAA Questions / Free Lifetime Updates
The best explanations in the business
Fast, efficient study.
Pass Your Checkride With Confidence!
FAA Practical Test prep that reflects actual checkrides.
Any checkride: Airplane, Helicopter, Glider, etc.
Written and maintained by actual pilot examiners and master CFIs.
The World's Most Trusted eLogbook
Be Organized, Current, Professional, and Safe.
Highly customizable - for student pilots through pros.
Free Transition Service for users of other eLogs.
Our sincere thanks to pilots such as yourself who support AskACFI while helping themselves by using the awesome PC, Mac, iPhone/iPad, and Android aviation apps of our sponsors.

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.

    +2 Votes Thumb up 3 Votes Thumb down 1 Votes



  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.

    +1 Votes Thumb up 1 Votes Thumb down 0 Votes


The following terms have been auto-detected the question above and any answers or discussion provided. Click on a term to see its definition from the Dauntless Aviation JargonBuster Glossary.

Answer Question

Our sincere thanks to all who contribute constructively to this forum in answering flight training questions. If you are a flight instructor or represent a flight school / FBO offering flight instruction, you are welcome to include links to your site and related contact information as it pertains to offering local flight instruction in a specific geographic area. Additionally, direct links to FAA and related official government sources of information are welcome. However we thank you for your understanding that links to other sites or text that may be construed as explicit or implicit advertising of other business, sites, or goods/services are not permitted even if such links nominally are relevant to the question asked.