If you crash does a filed but not opened FP help?

I wouldn't expect it do much more than simply making sure whomever is most likely to report you overdue knows where you were going and a bit about how you intended to get there.
 
I can imagine the headlines: Small plane crashes: pilot files flightplan, doesn't activate.
 
Fun fact about Canada:
In Canada, they will activate your flight plan for you, at your ETD, if you've filed one and you don't call to cancel or change it.
(You can guess how I found this out! -- whoopsie!)

In the U.S., my understanding is that a flight plan will simply expire and disappear after a few hours.
 
SAR teams may check in with AFSS to see if a FP was filed, hoping to learn something about the route. But an unopened FP won't generate any search operation, itself.
 
It is an advantage to finding you because it gives the search teams a hint where to look.

other things that help are your 407 ELT and your cell phone. There is a forensic team which can triangulate your cell phone to within about 100’.
 
If you don’t open the flight plan, no action will take place,they can’t guess what might be in your mind.
 
The route doesn't really do much for the initial search. The protocol is to take the last point where you were known to be and the search a radius corresponding to the amount of fuel you claimed.

The intended destination will be one of the first places they'll inquire to see if you made it and failed to close the plan. I've received a few of those calls as airport manager.

This is of course all predicated on them knowing you were missing in the first place and the the plan didn't time out (what two hours?) because it wasn't activated.
 
bflynn said:
... There is a forensic team which can triangulate your cell phone to within about 100’.
Click to expand...
If you are near enough to cell towers that they are line-of-sight to your phone and your phone is not damaged or somehow shielded and the battery has not died. More useful is the fact that when you are airborne and your phone is connecting to towers they can estimate a route. As is usually the case, the advertising on cell phone forensics is a tad better than the real world. Still, it's a great thing.
 
Plus with ADSB, even without an open flight plan, they might have a good idea on where to start looking.
 
In the US, if you don't activate a filed VFR flight plan, it will expire in the FAA system (Leidos) two hours past the ETD. The system will not generate an alert for being overdue, so FSS will not come looking for you unless you are reported missing. If your registration number is known or can be determined, it can be used in a variety of ways to help locate the flight plan, or if ADS-B was used and you are not anonymous, the FAA could locate your last known position or if a 406 MHz ELT was activated, SARSAT would know this and within an hour or so have a rough location unless the 406 MHz ELT had GPS input, in which case, a last known position will be available within minutes of activation. So it all depends if someone knows your plans or notices you are missing.
 
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