PilotEdge Forums

Hello PE Community,

This is my first post on here. I have been flying the 737-800 on PE and I must say it is absolutely wonderful. Before I fly, I usually research my route online,reference the charts and then file the IFR flight plan.

Now my question is, can I fly IFR on the jet without doing that? There are many airports I want to fly out of and in to, but I would rather not spend a bunch of time figuring out the routing STARs and SIDs etc.

Can I just contact clearance or ground delivery and get a pop up type IFR clearance to any airport? Your responses will be greatly appreciated!

Haroon

You can only get an IFR clearance without filing if the city pairs are served by a TEC route (see the I3 and I4 ratings in our training program

Other than that, flightaware.com can help you find out what the most common routes are between airports. You're going to want to arrive prepared...not copying a full route clearance every time you want to fly. Flightaware will let you do that. Sorry to be the bearer, but other than local TEC routes, some preparation is required before each flight. Thankfully FA can speed that up considerably.

You have to search around a bit on Flightaware to find the page where they show recently cleared routes. To help make it easier, I added a link from MyFlightRoute.com so you can quickly look up routes for your flight.

If you ever get the opportunity, take a ground school class at your local FBO. You might even be able to talk an instructor into doing an introductory class on flight planning, if it's a slow day and you mention what it's for (increasing realism for simulation).

Reason being, the preparation for a VFR flight, "by the books", seemed to take forever when I was training. Weight & balance, plot out the course, dig out the E6B (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E6B), reference the winds aloft forecast, call in for the weather, calculate calculate calculate. That feeling of forever lasted until a pilot walked into the FBO one day equipped with nothing but a handheld GPS, and my instructor asked me on the sly "What happens if/when the battery dies?"

Thanks for the tips guys!

Keith, the night I wrote this entry I did a TEC route flight from Long Beach to Oxnard. It worked out well! I will check out your links (BTW I've been spreading the word and been doing demos of PE to international flight school students here and they are loving it).
Kullery, I have been using flightaware to search for routes that I have flown until now, but the info I found was very limited.. I couldn't find much short haul jet routings between airports.. and when I found IFR flight plans, it was for smaller airplanes... Thanks for the link, I will look into that.
Luckyone, I have my single engine IR/CPL so now I'm dabbling into the jet IFR world to do some fantasy flying. I trained out of LGB and did many tower en route trips around here, but wasn't sure on how it worked out with a 737 jet following TEC routes.. Didn't know that it worked the same way as the little guys!