Must file to an IAF?/Original poster here, more ...

"Snowbird" wrote in message =
om...
"Geo. Anderson" wrote in message =
...
Thing two: Possibly I contributed to confusion by ineptly writing =
the=20
question. What I meant was that my route of flight (block 8) would=20
terminate at an IAF, and one that is on the enroute charts BTW, not =
that=20
my destination (block 9) would be an IAF. In fact, block 9 says =
"airport."
=20
Thing three: It still seems to me to be a logical thing to do for =
block=20
8. At worst it is harmless.
=20
I hope one of the points made is that it's NOT necessarily harmless. =20
=20
If you've filed an entire route of flight by airways, it's probably
"no great harms" because your route is well-defined.
=20
If you're not filing via airways, and your flight originates outside
the ATC facility who "owns" that IAF, the harm is that the ATC =
computer
will very likely not recognize that IAF and will stop processing your
flight plan at that point. So if you insist on putting an IAF in
block 8, make sure there are several more nationally-known waypoints=20
defining your route of flight.
=20
Cheers,
Sydney

Sydney, perhaps George only barely missed a good idea.
If by experience he learns ATC almost always wants him someplace,
it's OK to flight-plan across that point.

In my case, I realized many years ago that regardless of how I filed
to my home airport from the west, somewhere around Indianapolis I'd
always be re-routed across the GUNNE intersection 18 miles from home.
GUNNE is where Approach Control wants us, even though it's not an IAF.
In fact, GUNNE has even been removed from our approach charts.

So I quickly learned to file direct ROD GUNNE OSU,
or direct FWA GUNNE OSU, to avoid re-routes.
If George had put it that way, instead of fixating on IAFs,
that other thread might have been shorter.

To George: I've included the destination airport as the final route =
element
in block 8 for more than forty years now, and nobody's ever complained,
either in the U.S. or in Canada. Perhaps it's redundant, but it works. =
:-)
---JRC---