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4 Answers

SoCal TEC route system

Asked by: 4636 views FAA Regulations, Instrument Rating

I understand with the TEC system you don't have to file an IFR flight plan, you can just call up and get a clearance. Is this only supposed to be for the airport pairs listed in the chart supplement or can you pretty much operate IFR without pre-filing throughout the whole SoCal area? Because it seems like people don't file flight plans for things like departing IFR to VFR-on-top, flying to a local fix for practice approaches, or hopping between airports within the same TEC "area". They just call up clearance or ground and put in a request. Is this just a SoCal TEC-related thing or would you also not file for these sort of short range operations in the rest of the country?

 

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4 Answers



  1. John Scarry on Sep 11, 2017

    TEC is also available in Northern California. (SF-San Jose-Oakland) and according to the Chart Supplement Northeast Supplement, lots of city pairs in that part of the country. When studying for my IFR rating, I was told that if you ask for a TEC to your destination you had better know the route when you request TEC because they will give you a route name—not fixes, e.g. SBAN47 or CSTN24. I have been told that they are also moving to give TEC routes for any flight plans between two TEC cities.

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  2. Mark Kolber on Sep 12, 2017

    There are TEC routes in California and in the northeast. They are, in essence, the same concept as the IFR Preferred Routes you also see in the Chart Supplement, but limited to flights remaining entirely in TRACON airspace. They are both in the same FAA database searchable at https://www.fly.faa.gov/rmt/nfdc_preferred_routes_database.jsp.

    The common use of a no-prefiling TEC clearance you describe is mainly a SOCAL thing, although I understand some other parts of the country do have a “local IFR” procedure which is similar, but without the published TEC routes,

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  3. cmpt7 on Sep 12, 2017

    Im still a bit confused about when to file and and not to file. Is there anything wrong with just filing for everything to be safe?

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  4. Mark Kolber on Sep 16, 2017

    There is never anything wrong with filing for everything.

    The SOCAL, “local IFR,” and every other “pop up” procedure are conveniences that do not work everywhere all the time. Filing an IFR flight plan to get in the US IFR system is universal,

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