With the London 2012 Olympics soon approaching have you thought about filing your flight plan? It’s important to think quickly in regards to filing a flight plan for this special event as pilots who are wishing to fly through the Restricted Zone, to be put in place over the capital and surrounding areas during the Games, will need to file an accepted flight plan with air traffic controllers before this can take place.
GA pilots are being encouraged to file a test flight plan to familiarise themselves with the process and be able to learn what they will need to do to continue flying during the time of the Games with minimum disruption. Pilots who already have an AFPEx account during the Games can log on through the Olympics website, alternatively pilots can also use AFTN or other tools such as SkyDemon Light.
The plan should be similar to one that a pilot intends to fly during the Olympics, but as this is a test, they do not actually have to fly the route on their planning day. To carefully avoid disruption to the ‘live’ flight planning system, and therefore the safety of real operations, participants are required to carefully follow several steps to clearly indicate their plan is actually a test. These can be found on the Olympics Airspace Safety website.
