PilotEdge Forums

Hello PE,

I need a little guidance on ATC depature terminology on a flight I had. My flight plan was KSNA to KPSP. The route was MUSEL8 TRM.

1. During the clearance delivery, why did ATC say the word “direct” to me after they said TRM (Thermal)? Does that mean I assume go direct to PSP after TRM?

2. During my departure on MUSEL8, the routing instructions are Head 196 until you cross the SLI R-118, then turn left heading 177 and wait for vectors to MUSEL. While I was on the 177 heading, I was instructed to climb to 15000 and turn left 050 then “join the departure”. I stayed on 050 for 5 minutes and ATC told me that I should have headed to TRM on my own and should not just stayed on heading 050 Ugh! What does it mean when ATC says “join the departure”? Does it mean I should rejoin my orginal filed plan?

Thank you for your time. Learning more eveyday.

The clearance after TRM was direct to the destination airport, KPSP.

The departure controllers instructions to "Fly heading 050, join the MUSEL8 departure" meant they wanted you to fly heading 050, until intercepting a published segment of the departure. Without knowing your position when the instruction was given, I'm thinking the controller most likely wanted you to intercept the 061* radial from SXC, to join the segment between MUSEL and TEYKI. By intercepting that radial you are joining the departure, and should fly the rest as published on the chart.

Also, you'll get a better response for topics of this nature by posting them in the Pilots or General sections of the forum.

Moderator Note: moved to the Pilots forum. Please pay close attention to this forum in which you are posting. This had no relevance to the Software forum.