Submitting a Flight Plan in VATNZ Airspace
All aircraft must submit a flight plan before entering or commencing a flight within VATNZ airspace. The flight plan must contain (at minimum) the following:
- callsign
- departure airport
- arrival airport
- aircraft type
- flight type (VFR/IFR/etc.)
A new flight plan must be submitted for each subsequent flight during the same connection to the VATSIM servers. The requirement applies to all aircraft, regardless of flight type, point of origin/destination, or the presence (or not) of controllers or other aircraft within the airspace.
Reasons for this policy:
- The pilot client software needs the aircraft type from the flight plan to display the aircraft to other pilots correctly.
- The arrival/departure airports are required to track the flight the VATNZ Online Activity system correctly.
- Some of the pilot clients will automatically submit the last used flight plan if the pilot does not enter themselves, leading to potentially incorrect and confusing information being displayed to pilots and ATC.
VATNZ is interested in accurately keeping track of who is flying in our airspace and what sort of hours are being logged on both sides of the scope over a given period. It's one of the ways we measure our growth and success as a division, and it also provides us with information around where people are flying/what sorts of flights/what times of day/etc., which helps us to plan better events in the future.
Without filing at least a departure and arrival airport, your flight is not included in this data, and it becomes that much more inaccurate. We greatly appreciate the information that is gathered from this process.