What happens if I don't file an alternate?

mjburian

mjburian

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Say the weather is less than the 1-2-3 required to file an alternate. Yet, I neglect to file one. What happens?

Is the filed flight plan rejected by the system? When I try to pick up my clearance am I slapped on the wrist and asked for my alternate? Can I pick up the clearance and then get busted for not having an alternate filed?

FAR 91.169 makes it sound like I've broken the reg if I file the flight plan (in the situation described) without an alternate, whether I pick up the clearance or not.
 
It's aviation not day care.

Don't think "the system" is going to double check your weather and TAFs for you.

So, if everything goes as expected, doubt anything happens, at all.

Now if you end up 7600, have to go missed and can't get into your filed airport, well things might be a little more interesting if you didn't file properly with an alternate.

I'm just at the point I always file a alternate if I go IFR, with the recommended ones in fltplan, and how quick you can check wx, it's really not any noticeable increase in work for me
 
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The alternate is for your fuel planning. The system doesn't know you require an alternate and ATC has no idea what it is either. So if you're asking who's gonna bust you for violating the FARs? No one.
 
James331 said:
It's aviation not day care.

Don't think "the system" is going to double check your weather and TAFs for you.

So, if everything goes as expected, doubt anything happens, at all.

Now if you end up 7600, have to go missed and can't get into your filed airport, well things might be a little more interesting if you didn't file properly with an alternate.
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Understood. I guess there were actually two (poorly worded?) questions:

1) Will the system accept a flight plan without an alternate if forecast weather is less than 1-2-3? Seems the answer to this one is "Yes, it'll accept it."

2. Is simply FILING without an alternate a bust of the regs (even in the case where you may never intend to fly)?
 
Velocity173 said:
The alternate is for your fuel planning. The system doesn't know you require an alternate and ATC has no idea what it is either. So if you're asking who's gonna bust you for violating the FARs? No one.
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I understand that the alternate is meant for fuel planning, but you can't just pick an alternate, make sure you have enough fuel to satisfy the regs and NOT file the alternate. According to 91.169 you have to file the alternate. So if you don't, when has the reg been broken? At the time of filing?

I know I filed/briefed a handful of IFR flight plans in training, but not sure if I always included and alternate when it was required by 91.169.

Maybe this is just an academic discussion... But I wasn't sure if a) the system would catch a "bad" flight plan and b) if it matters whether you pick the clearance up or if you've busted the reg when filing.
 
mjburian said:
I understand that the alternate is meant for fuel planning, but you can't just pick an alternate, make sure you have enough fuel to satisfy the regs and NOT file the alternate. According to 91.169 you have to file the alternate. So if you don't, when has the reg been broken? At the time of filing?

I know I filed/briefed a handful of IFR flight plans in training, but not sure if I always included and alternate when it was required by 91.169.

Maybe this is just an academic discussion... But I wasn't sure if a) the system would catch a "bad" flight plan and b) if it matters whether you pick the clearance up or if you've busted the reg when filing.
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Yeah at the time of filing. "Each person filing an IFR flight plan..." It's spelled out in 91.169. Nothing in the system will catch the violation of the FAR. And as I said, ATC has no clue what your filed alternate is either. You don't even have to go to your filed alternate if you can't get to your destination.
 
Velocity173 said:
Yeah at the time of filing. "Each person filing an IFR flight plan..." It's spelled out in 91.169. Nothing in the system will catch the violation of the FAR. And as I said, ATC has no clue what your filed alternate is either. You don't even have to go to your filed alternate if you can't get to your destination.
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Right. I knew the part about ATC not knowing your filed alternate and that it doesn't need to be used in the case of a diversion, just don't think I'd considered that simply filing a flight plan could be in violation of the FARs. (No matter how slim the chances of being caught/punished.)
 
Shawn said:
Same thing that happen if you fly a plane one day out of annual.

It is not a problem till it is a problem.
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I guess, but that somehow feels like something that goes beyond "clicking file in Foreflight".

Shame on me for not knowing that the act of filing could be breaking a reg, but it feels strange that you could (theoretically) be busting a reg while sitting on a toilet in the comfort of your own home.
 
As soon as you depart a pair of F-16s will be dispatched for an intercept. They'll either shoot you down or force you to land at the nearest airport, where you'll be met by men in black vans and quickly whisked off to a secret government prison.

Seriously though, likely nobody is paying attention but if there was an issue where people start investigating paperwork then that's skmethjng they can ding you on. I always file an alternate. If you use something like FltPln.com it's super easy to calculate the fuel and such so there almost no reason to not file one. If nothing else it's good situational awareness about your destination which is never a bad thing.
 
From my understanding


mjburian said:
Understood. I guess there were actually two (poorly worded?) questions:

1) Will the system accept a flight plan without an alternate if forecast weather is less than 1-2-3? Seems the answer to this one is "Yes, it'll accept it."
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Correct, it will take the flight plan even without a needed alternate.


mjburian said:
2. Is simply FILING without an alternate a bust of the regs (even in the case where you may never intend to fly)?
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Yes,
if you don't have pt91 123, you gotta file a alternate. But things would have to go rather sideways for you to get busted.
 
rocketflyer84 said:
As soon as you depart a pair of F-16s will be dispatched for an intercept. They'll either shoot you down or force you to land at the nearest airport, where you'll be met by men in black vans and quickly whisked off to a secret government prison.

Seriously though, likely nobody is paying attention but if there was an issue where people start investigating paperwork then that's skmethjng they can ding you on. I always file an alternate. If you use something like FltPln.com it's super easy to calculate the fuel and such so there almost no reason to not file one. If nothing else it's good situational awareness about your destination which is never a bad thing.
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I may change my SOP to always include an alternate vs only when required. As you say, there's almost no reason not to file one (especially since I'm always tankering lots of extra fuel).

Though, it would be cool to get a closeup photo of a pair of F-16s in flight...
 
I know I read a story recently, maybe AOPA legal? about someone running into trouble for 'failing to include an alternate', so I have been trying to remember to fill that box. (It's so rare you need to use the alt...but then I did last winter.)
 
James331 said:
It's aviation not day care.

Don't think "the system" is going to double check your weather and TAFs for you.

So, if everything goes as expected, doubt anything happens, at all.

Now if you end up 7600, have to go missed and can't get into your filed airport, well things might be a little more interesting if you didn't file properly with an alternate.
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I've done all that on one flight except for squawking 7600, while forgetting to file an alternate. Nothing happened.

I'm not advocating not filing an alternate, I'm just saying that I think there would likely have to be some other event that happened and the discovery that you didn't file an alternate tipped the scales toward the FAA taking action against you.
 
mondtster said:
I've done all that on one flight except for squawking 7600, while forgetting to file an alternate. Nothing happened.

I'm not advocating not filing an alternate, I'm just saying that I think there would likely have to be some other event that happened and the discovery that you didn't file an alternate tipped the scales toward the FAA taking action against you.
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Location, location, location.

Go missed at KTEB and land KJFK

Go missed Burbank, land LAX

with no alternates filed.

Overall it's just to give ATC a heads up if things go kaka, don't file and show on the ILS at a major airport out of no where, no bueno
 
If you fail to file a required alternate, you will only suffer consequences if for any reason, the FAA has cause to examine the details of your flight. Even if it had nothing to do with alternates, if the FAA has a reason to scrutinize your flight, they will hammer you for any infraction they come across. Similar to taking off without legal minimum fuel for the planned flight--the FAA won't care until they do.
 
Witmo said:
If you fail to file a required alternate, you will only suffer consequences if for any reason, the FAA has cause to examine the details of your flight. Even if it had nothing to do with alternates, if the FAA has a reason to scrutinize your flight, they will hammer you for any infraction they come across. Similar to taking off without legal minimum fuel for the planned flight--the FAA won't care until they do.
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Totally agreed. I was just surprised that FILING could be an infraction. Here's a convoluted example to illustrate what I'm talking about:

I file an IFR flight plan for our club airplane and neglect to include an alternate when one is required. I later decide not to take the flight (for whatever reason). But weather clears up and one of the other members takes the plane VFR and has something happen that gets the FAA involved. If I understand this correctly, *I* could be at risk for an infraction (of 91.169), despite the fact that I was nowhere near the airplane.
 
mjburian said:
Totally agreed. I was just surprised that FILING could be an infraction. Here's a convoluted example to illustrate what I'm talking about:

I file an IFR flight plan for our club airplane and neglect to include an alternate when one is required. I later decide not to take the flight (for whatever reason). But weather clears up and one of the other members takes the plane VFR and has something happen that gets the FAA involved. If I understand this correctly, *I* could be at risk for an infraction (of 91.169), despite the fact that I was nowhere near the airplane.
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Honestly, the worst that will happen to you under that circumstance is that you'll have to make a phone call and get told not to do it again. And even that is exceptionally unlikely. Your violation would not be relevant to the accident investigation.
 
mjburian said:
Totally agreed. I was just surprised that FILING could be an infraction. Here's a convoluted example to illustrate what I'm talking about:

I file an IFR flight plan for our club airplane and neglect to include an alternate when one is required. I later decide not to take the flight (for whatever reason). But weather clears up and one of the other members takes the plane VFR and has something happen that gets the FAA involved. If I understand this correctly, *I* could be at risk for an infraction (of 91.169), despite the fact that I was nowhere near the airplane.
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I've "filed" in "club" airplanes before and then not gone. VFR and IFR. I always cancel the flight plan if I decide not to go. Besides all the issues discussed already it can get to be a pain in the azz when "duplicate" flight plans start showing up. You're doing this for the other guy who takes the plane after you decide to not go. And there are scenarios where "Cleared as Filed" could rear it's ugly head
 
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MAKG1 said:
Honestly, the worst that will happen to you under that circumstance is that you'll have to make a phone call and get told not to do it again. And even that is exceptionally unlikely. Your violation would not be relevant to the accident investigation.
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You're probably right, but I don't even want it to get that far, if I can help it. And now I know better!

luvflyin said:
I've "filed" in "club" airplanes before and then not gone. VFR and IFR. I always cancel the flight plan if I decide not to go. Besides all the issues discussed already it can get to be a pain in the azz when "duplicate" flight plans start showing up. You're doing this for the other guy who takes the plane after you decide to not go. And there are scenarios where "Cleared as Filed" could rear it's ugly head
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Another good point!
 
mjburian said:
I guess, but that somehow feels like something that goes beyond "clicking file in Foreflight".

Shame on me for not knowing that the act of filing could be breaking a reg, but it feels strange that you could (theoretically) be busting a reg while sitting on a toilet in the comfort of your own home.
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Hmm, good thought.
Care to file a feature request to the FF team? They are pretty responsive and most of the staff are, believe it or not, pilots.
If FF could warn us "hey, dummy, you are missing an alternate, given your ETD and TAF", it could save some trouble.
 
BigBadLou said:
Hmm, good thought.
Care to file a feature request to the FF team? They are pretty responsive and most of the staff are, believe it or not, pilots.
If FF could warn us "hey, dummy, you are missing an alternate, given your ETD and TAF", it could save some trouble.
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There would be a lot of ways to break that. Many instrument approaches have no associated TAF, for instance.
 
BigBadLou said:
Hmm, good thought.
Care to file a feature request to the FF team? They are pretty responsive and most of the staff are, believe it or not, pilots.
If FF could warn us "hey, dummy, you are missing an alternate, given your ETD and TAF", it could save some trouble.
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Yeah, like MAKG1 said, it'd be a great feature, but nearly impossible to implement in a manner that caught all cases.

Though, even if it caught only the cases where there's a TAF (or maybe could even parse the area forecast), it might catch SOME of the cases.
 
Agreed. But just because it cannot cover all test cases, a feature should not be completely dismissed if it can be helpful in general.
FF is smart enough to offer you the nearest TAF if your destination field does not have one. Nifty. Possibly helpful in this situation too since the pilot is very likely to use the same TAF for decision making.
Anyway, implementation hurdles should not stop a concept proposal for a particular feature. That's what the research&definition phase is for. (yes, I do PM :) )
 
Hmm. That getting FF to offer up Alternates idea could be useful. I'd want it to be a feature I could turn off though. Having it searching for and processing all the from an hour before until an hour after, what equipment I have, GPS, is it WAAS, etc etc might take a while and use a lot of my precious free Gigabytes per month.
 
BigBadLou said:
Agreed. But just because it cannot cover all test cases, a feature should not be completely dismissed if it can be helpful in general.
FF is smart enough to offer you the nearest TAF if your destination field does not have one. Nifty. Possibly helpful in this situation too since the pilot is very likely to use the same TAF for decision making.
Anyway, implementation hurdles should not stop a concept proposal for a particular feature. That's what the research&definition phase is for. (yes, I do PM :) )
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I'm a developer, so I understand the 80/20 rule. Didn't mean to suggest that it wasn't a good idea, I was just starting down the path of "It probably can't be perfect, but even if it caught some of the cases it could be valuable." And maybe even "fail" gracefully in the sense that the user could set it to always ask about an alternate if a TAF wasn't available (and the FA couldn't be parsed).
 
BigBadLou said:
Agreed. But just because it cannot cover all test cases, a feature should not be completely dismissed if it can be helpful in general.
FF is smart enough to offer you the nearest TAF if your destination field does not have one. Nifty. Possibly helpful in this situation too since the pilot is very likely to use the same TAF for decision making.
Anyway, implementation hurdles should not stop a concept proposal for a particular feature. That's what the research&definition phase is for. (yes, I do PM :) )
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Not at ALL obvious that it would be helpful. And it would get turned off everywhere unless it worked correctly almost all the time, which is exactly equivalent with not having it at all. Most instrument approaches do not have TAFs, so most of them are not going to work, just from that. It's not cost-less either. Training users to ignore your alarms is a very bad thing.

I know folks on this board don't understand the consequences of false notification very well, but think of it this way: that line of thinking is exactly what's wrong with electronic weather briefings. No, I don't care that some airport in North Dakota is closed for my west coast flight, because Flight Service couldn't figure out what state it was in. I don't care that there are five different TFRs over Beale (all the time) when I'm flying in the other direction. And so on. This leads to skimming the briefings, which is completely at odds to what they were intended to accomplish.

It's not a test case. It's a USE case. And until you enumerate them -- ALL of them -- you don't know if it works or not.

Yes, you can dismiss a half-baked idea out of hand if it's obviously flawed. There is a much larger set of bad ideas than good ideas. And in software, complexity by itself is a flaw.
 
The Flight Plan Police come after you. I know they exist because ATC told us at one of the early SFRA meetings that they weren't the Flight Plan Police.

I suspect they're almost as feared as the phone cops.
 
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I always file an alternate, regardless of the weather. Twice I've broken out near pattern altitude, switched to CTAF only to find someone in front of me forgot their gear and the runway was closed. So I had to go back in the goop and find another place to land.
 
jbarrass said:
I always file an alternate, regardless of the weather. Twice I've broken out near pattern altitude, switched to CTAF only to find someone in front of me forgot their gear and the runway was closed. So I had to go back in the goop and find another place to land.
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That's a great reason to carry plenty of extra fuel and get a good preflight briefing, but isn't exactly tied to filing an alternate. The filed alternate is really only used to determine how much fuel you NEED to carry, in order to be legal. Nothing more.
 
Yep, and in some cases you'd want more fuel than the basic alternate. I have a legal alternate that's only 5 miles away from my home strip, but I tend to want to be prepared to go further than that.
 
flyingron said:
Yep, and in some cases you'd want more fuel than the basic alternate. I have a legal alternate that's only 5 miles away from my home strip, but I tend to want to be prepared to go further than that.
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So do I. San Jose even has a nice ILS in both directions. But the point is to be able to land somewhere with different weather, which for me means somewhere in the Central Valley if I'm headed home.
 
You end up on double secret probation.
 
jbarrass said:
I always file an alternate, regardless of the weather. Twice I've broken out near pattern altitude, switched to CTAF only to find someone in front of me forgot their gear and the runway was closed. So I had to go back in the goop and find another place to land.
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Twice? Being followed by you could be a 'probable cause' LOL
 
HaHa.... well I do encourage people to stay out of my way ;)
 
James331 said:
Overall it's just to give ATC a heads up if things go kaka
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I'm intrigued - several posters above state that ATC has no clue what the alternate is. Is this true? False? True in normal circumstances but they can access it if SHTF?
 
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