I'm Not Going to Crash... So I Don't Need a Flight Plan!

Over the past year or so, the "seek and ye shall find" forces spent much time searching for people who didn't really want to be found. Oh, at the time, they may have wanted to be found, but subsequent inquiries showed that they had stacked the odds against it. Or maybe they put all their faith in the ELT-SARSAT-SAR network. Whatever the reason, they left search and rescue (SAR) forces few clues to work with on those fateful days when the law of gravity overpowered all of the supposed remedies for the hazards that always lurk in aviation.

Let's get one thing straight: The first line of defence for alerting SAR is the flight plan or flight notification. Got that? Repeat after me: The first line of defence for alerting SAR is the flight plan or flight notification. There. Now remember it.

If you use either of these, someone will notice if you do not return on schedule. That someone will notify SAR. SAR will promptly begin a search by flying to the last known point, which is not a milestone en route to the edge of the world — some people still think it's flat — but rather the last place that your aircraft reached. SAR personnel then fly along your proposed route until they find you.

If they don't find you right away, they keep expanding the search area until they do. Although they don't find all the crash sites, they have a much better batting average than many millionaire ball players.

Their impressive success rate is built with your help. You always file a flight plan, don't you? Oh, you don't? Because you've got this ELT, you say? Good point, but sometimes ELTs die in the crash, even if you don't. Then what happens?

ELT or no ELT, a lapsed flight plan gets a lot of attention in air traffic services (ATS) circles. Even more than accountants, ATS wallahs love neatly balanced columns of figures, particularly when one column is labelled takeoffs, and the other is labelled landings. When the takeoffs exceed the landings, they get excited and start calling SAR.

OK, so you've filed your flight plan. But all of a sudden there's this nasty cloud you don't want to penetrate, and so you divert, to stay in the nice clear air. Should you tell ATS that your route from A to B will now be via C? Of course!

SAR people are reasonably clever in determining how a pilot might alter the route to fit varying circumstances. In one of the recent searches, the SAR report said, "The pilot mentioned to Prince Rupert FSS that he was going to fly a direct route even though the published VFR route had been recommended. The VFR route from Smithers to Prince George put the aircraft 90 NM south of the direct route. All the areas between the VFR route and the direct route had to be searched as it was possible that the pilot could have flown only part of the VFR route before proceeding directly to his destination." Despite this quantum expansion of the search area, SAR found the aircraft on the first day of the search, in this case more by chance than anything else. File a flight plan, follow the intended route and, if diverting, tell someone.

In another crash involving an uncertain flight plan, there were survivors — injured survivors — who needed help. It didn't get there until the second day, in part because the flight plan was vague. British Columbia is a big province, and much of it is vertical. Even with good information, visual searching is difficult; with sketchy information, it sometimes becomes impossible. File a flight plan, follow the intended route and, if diverting, tell someone.

In both crashes, the ELTs were destroyed. Thus, flight plan info became the only info available to the search master. In both cases, it was inadequate to provide prompt rescue.

Prolonged searches are not the only result of sketchy flight plans. Visual search ops always involve some risk. Sadly, during one of the searches, a Civil Air Search and Rescue Association crew perished while looking for survivors. Over the years, other SAR crews have died while searching for aircraft with inaccurate flight plans or no plans at all. File a flight plan, follow the intended route and, if diverting, tell someone.

Now, one last time: The first line of defence for alerting SAR is the flight plan or flight notification.

You don't have to file your nails — just your flight plans.