PlasticPilot.net

As of 29th of June, US pilots flying IFR using RNAV segments (SIDs, airways, or STARs) will have to file IFR flight plan. Many websites already posted about that, including the excellent Ask A CFI, AOPA and the FAA itself.

Europe has been using such flight plans for years, even for VFR. Compared to the FAA template, the ICAO flight plan might seem complex, but don’t worry, you’ll get use to it. The post from Paul on Ask A CFI is really useful. Paul even created an 11 minutes video explaining how to fill the ICAO Flight Plan form (nice to discover your voice, Paul…).

Many has been said and published about it, and I don’t want to enter the argument. What I offer you today is a simple but useful resource: my own version of the ICAO Flight Plan, in the form of a Microsoft Excel workseet. The main advantage of it over the PDF form you can find on the web is that you can save it !

I used this form many times, and asked the services to whom I sent it if it was good. The answer was always positive, so I’m quite sure the US staff will appreciate it as well. Feel free to download it and use it to print empty copies, or filled ones.

Click here to download the ICAO Flight Plan for Microsoft Excel. For technical reasons, it’s stored in my briefing website, www.easymetar.com. This document contains some special characters, used for the arrows, which might look strange, depending which version of Excel you use. Depending of your printer, you could have to adjust the cells size a bit, to make it fit in a single page.

I offer it “as is”, without any kind of warranty or liability. If you have problems with it, or suggestions to improve it, let me know. I hope this will make your transition to ICAO flight plan easier, and your flight planning better, even if you fly outside US.