Can ATC assign an airway if filed direct?

In article ,
(Andrew Sarangan) wrote:

Roy Smith wrote in message
...
In article ,
(Andrew Sarangan) wrote:

If you file to a VOR direct, can ATC clear you along an airway
instead, and expect you to look up the airways? In other words, how
important is to carry an enroute chart if you don't plan on using
airways?

You're joking, right?

ATC can give you any clearance they want. You don't have to accept it,
and can't if you don't have the equipment to fly it (i.e. route requires
DME and you don't have DME). But, you'd look pretty stupid saying,
"unable airways, negative chart".

Roy

No, I am not joking. Let me put the question differently. Does ATC
always assume that you have a VOR receiver and the ability to fly
airways? Since there is no specific equipment suffix for a VOR, it
appears to me that they expect all aircraft to be equipped with a VOR
receiver unless we tell them otherwise.

Ah, that's a slightly different question. I recoiled at your idea of
not carrying an en-route chart.

It is certainly legal to fly IFR without a VOR receiver, but it's pretty
much taken for granted that you've got one. It's certainly taken for
granted that you've got a chart!

What would you do if you lost comm and didn't have a VOR receiver? Do
you have some other way to navigate on your own? If you had GPS, you'd
be able to fly airways with that. ADF only? I suppose it's possible.
People used to do it. Not sure why you'd want to do it today.

Maybe I'm just not understanding the situation. Are you saying that you
just want to file GPS direct destination and leave the chart at home to
save weight? In which case I'm back to recoiling :-)