Five Ways to Pick Up Your IFR Flight Plan
Flight
service before leaving airport (Clearance Void Time)
After you have completed your preflight planning and preflight inspection, you can call flight Service at 1-800-WX-Brief to pick up your IFR clearance and Clearance Void Time. You should have already filed your IFR flight plan at least 30 minutes before trying to pick it up. This gives the computers time to distribute the information to everyone who needs it.
When you call FSS, simply ask to pick up your IFR to …(destination). This way if you have more than one IFR one file (as you would on a long cross country) they will activate the correct one.
Flight Service will put you on hold while they call Approach for your area. Approach will read your clearance to FSS and they will forward that information to you over the phone.
Approach will set a “Clearance Void” if not off by a certain time. They may also give you a “Clearance Active Time” is the skies are busy over your airport at the present time. Approach must clear the skies above your airport of all IFR traffic so you can climb out IMC without worrying about running into other IFR traffic. Theoretically, you will be able to see any VFR traffic and they will be able to see you. They will normally ask how soon you will be able to depart and use that as the length for the Clearance Void time. If you are not off by that time, you must return to the terminal and call FSS for a new Clearance Void Time. Approach needs to know you did not depart as well.
After filing your IFR flight plan, you may also pick it up “in the air” after departure. This can only be done when you are able to maintain VFR conditions until you are high enough for ATC to pick up your transponder. In some areas, you must be quite high in order for ATC to “see” your aircraft. Caution should be used to make sure the ceilings are high enough, or you will be heading in the direction of the ATC radar. It would be possible to remain 500 feet below the cloud deck VFR until you got close enough to the radar service, then after “radar contact” you could climb to your En Route altitude. However, in this case, it would probably be better to pick up your clearance on the ground as stated above.
If you are departing from Class D airspace, you will pick up your IFR from ground control before, during, or after taxi to the active runway. (I don’t recommend picking up you IFR clearance while taxiing. Runway incursions are up over the last few years and distracting yourself from where you are going could cause serious hazard to you and others.) So, let’s consider the other two options: before taxi and after run-up (prior to contacting tower for departure).
In either case, you simply ask to pick up your IFR to..(Destination-in case you have more than one IFR on file; they will give you the fight one). Ground will give you a squawk code, departure frequency, (then hopefully “cleared as filed”). If not, other items may include; initial route of flight, and any other pertinent information you will need during your flight.
If you are departing from a Class C airport, you will encounter an additional airport service beyond what you will have at a Class D airport. Clearance Delivery will gather the information about your initial route of flight. You need to tell them:
1) That you have ATIS information
2) Location on the field
3) Type Aircraft
4) On course route of flight
They will in turn, give you the following information (which I suggest you write down)
1) Squawk Code
2) Departure frequency
3) Initial direction of flight
4) Initial altitude to maintain
5) Then the remainder of your IFR Clearance
6) Then to contact Ground Control for taxi instructions