IFR Flight Plan Dropped Off

[Notatestpilot]

I had prefiled an IFR flight plan from KVIH to KALN. My estimated departure time was 10:45 am local.
By the time I got airborne and was 5000 feet, it was 11:26am local.
When I contacted center freq., they said your prefile flight plan had dropped off...”Do you still want to goto KALN?”
In the past they’d have it available for me to activate even a couple of hours later...not today.
I guess I will have a later time slot proposed in the future - so I can be late.

 

[Adam Weiss]

I’ve had my plan not be there a few times over the years.
In every case, after looking into it, it was a mistake I had made. I either entered the wrong time, wrong date, or in one case, forgot to check the “file” checkbox.

 

[Notatestpilot]

Yeah I hear ya...
Mine did get through. I used foreflight and received a confirmation email that's it's been filed.
Good things was the center controller gave me direct to KALN!

 

[luvflyin]

I had prefiled an IFR flight plan from KVIH to KALN. My estimated departure time was 10:45 am local.
By the time I got airborne and was 5000 feet, it was 11:26am local.
When I contacted center freq., they said your prefile flight plan had dropped off...”Do you still want to goto KALN?”
In the past they’d have it available for me to activate even a couple of hours later...not today.
I guess I will have a later time slot proposed in the future - so I can be late.

It sounds like he had remembered seeing it before but now it was gone. One wild azz guess is he, another Controller or the system had inadvertently activated it earlier and then removed it instead of just suspending it.

 

[flyingron]

Nine times out of ten a missing plan turns out to be a screwup in the pTime entry (usually bad zulu conversions). This is less of an issue when you file through the more modern interfaces that does the conversion for you.

Of course, my guys in the local towers will tell you that it's par for center to screw things up like that because that's why they are called "en route" controllers.

Of course, ZTL maligned the approach guys for not being able to properly enter my plan coming back from Oshkosh as well, so I guess it goes both ways.

 

[Notatestpilot]

Good to know. Thanks for your response.

 

[PastZTL]

Each center has a proposed flight plan drop interval. Ours was set at 120 minutes, but it is a changeable parameter. When the delays start going up, we would usually raise it to 180 or 240. Set it too high and you have beacon allocation issues. Set it too low and the flight plan drops out, causing the terminal guys to input a flight plan. Believe me, you don't want that to happen!