Abandon a flight

General Discussion Pilot Talk
1

Hi there,

in case I need to abandon a flight, what is the right procedure?

  1. disconnect and walk away?
  2. cancel IFR?
  3. communicate to ATC and disconnect? E
    ven on Unicom?

Thanks for support

2

If ATC is online and you already had contact it’s best to notify them so they know you will not come back, otherwise ATC may still expect that you reappear. In case your sim crashes you usually have a few seconds left before getting disconnected in which case I try to issue a quick call like “$callsign, sorry, my sim crashed, logging off” unless the frequency is too crowded. (On Unicom that’s not needed but if you were close to entering an active ATC’s boundary it may still be nice to message them anyway unless they already drown in traffic/communication.)

If you have to abandon the flight before you ever interact with ATC (e.g. before you asked for your IFR clearance) you wouldn’t need to do anything but I would still try to cancel or replace the flightplan, if possible, just in case a controller plans to come (or stay) online based on prefiled flights.

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3

You may find a few opinions on this, but in my opinion:

  1. If you’re not being controlled by ATC, no notification needed (disconnect at will)
    2a. If you’re being controlled by ATC, I prefer a very quick communication along the lines of, “xxx (ATC callsign), yyy (your callsign), sorry, need to disconnect, have a great day/take care/so long/cheers/etc.”.
    2b. If it’s an urgent situation (whether controlled or not), perfectly acceptable to simply disconnect with no notice. Same as if you lose power/internet/etc. It happens.
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4

Thank you very much! It’s all about being polite and the so-called good airmenship. But there is no way to deactivate the current Flightplan, just by refiling a new one with the same callsign.

I am quite unexperienced, but I enjoy this community.

Thanks

Rob

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