Don’ t Let ICAO Sneak Up on You! By Rose Marie Kern 2016
For years now the FAA has been moving towards changing all flight plans, both VFR and IFR filed within the U. S. border to ICAO. A few years ago ICAO Flight Plans were required for IFR flights requesting RVSM handling, then it was required of all aircraft crossing the ADIZ. As of the end of January 2017, ALL flight plans will be required to use the ICAO form.
But it doesn’ t have to be painful. For GA aircraft doing VFR flights, most of the information entered into the current domestic flight plans is the same, it just looks a little different. If you call flight service, you give all the same information for all but three fields of the flight plan. What’ s new is the type of flight field, the wake turbulence category and the equipment field. There are a lot of extra fields in the bottom half of the flight plan – but they are not required for domestic flights.
Say you are going to travel from home to Oshkosh. You have a nice little one prop aircraft. Right now your flight plan looks like this:
VFR, N12345, C210 / A, 145kts, Departing RWF, at 1300z, altitude 095, Route, Destination, ETE, Fuel, POB, Pilot Contact Info, and color of aircraft.
The ICAO form uses the same information in a different order, and adds fields for type of flight( G is General Aviation) and Wake Turbulence( in this case L for Light Aircraft) and Surveillance Equipment( usually Mode A or C).
N12334, VFR, G-( General), C210, L( light), SD, A, Departing KRWF, 1300z, N0145, A095, Route, KOSH, ETE, FUEL, POB, Acft Color and Pilot contact information.
Again, most of it is the same. The speed adds“ N” for Knots and is 4 digits. The Departure and Destination airports include the“ K” indicating these are airports inside the U. S. The Altitude begins with“ A” if it is below the flight levels.
The departure, destination and alternate airports must use the K to identify them as U. S. airports. Smaller alphanumeric airports will not be picked up in those fields so you must use ZZZZ and then place the actual airport identifier in the OTHER INFORMATION field.(/ DEP 5V5). Airports in the route field just use the domestic 3 letter ID.
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