Quick Route question

comair25

comair25

Well-Known Member
I fly out of KLIT. (This was on my Instrument X-Country with my first flight instructor, he has since left, and I am now Instrument rated yaya :nana2: ) Anway, When I want to go to Dallas I file a route say HOT PRX FINGR3. I would say thats a good route. I call up clearance and the first thing that happens *I knew this was coming*, "Cessna 11E, cleared to the Dallas Love airport...... Standby. Cessna 11E cleared to the Dallas love airport via Little Rock transition FINGR3 arrival, ..............." Ok, I read back the clearance which is what you are supposed to do first, then look over the route. I do and OMFG, I see the MEA is FL180, Keep in mind we are in a 172RG/U. I look at my instructor and say we cannot do this, that MEA is too high, and I cannot garuntee we are going to have acceptable VOR signal. Oh I forgot to mention we only have 1 VOR receiver. We had filed for 4k and received it. He said go ahead, they will correct it. I said are you sure? He was like its ok, and so I was like w/e I because this was in his name. If it was in mine I would have quired ATC. Even if we was in one of our straight legs that is /G we could still not do it because of the MEA.

Am I missing something? Or what he gave us ok. I guess the MVA for that area was extemely low. Thats the only thing I could think of. Should I have said no? Even though I have my ticket, I am still learning. I have always known I would have questioned the route, but I just want to know if it was ok what they did.

Thanks

Ryan
 
Since you can't fly it, what he gave you was not OK. The reason for the change may be as simple as a "preferred route." I don't have the A/FD on me, but there are several preferred routes listed there. There are also several preferred routes that are not published anywhere and that's another possibility. It may be as simple as "it printed out on the strip so the controller issued it." On the other hand, the MEA from Paris to Dallas is 5000 so flying it at 4 is just as bad as a FL180 mea. There are alot of new controllers in the FAA now (and most of them start training on clearance) so they may not catch errors like these or know to fix them.

The bottom line is, don't accept a clearance that can't be flown. Take care of that problem before you get in the air.
 
Funny that you mention it. I got cleared the LINDY2 LIT transition and around 80 South of STL MEA jumps from 8000 to FL180. I didn't know it so I had to ask ZKC once I got on with them. You know what they said? Cleared present heading when able direct LIT VOR. It happens from time to time. I don't usually fly departure procedures, unless you include the Memphis Seven Departure (I don't - climb to 700 feet before turning). I am sure that at some point I will do it again, but I don't plan on it.
 
tykrtr said:
Since you can't fly it, what he gave you was not OK. The reason for the change may be as simple as a "preferred route." I don't have the A/FD on me, but there are several preferred routes listed there. There are also several preferred routes that are not published anywhere and that's another possibility. It may be as simple as "it printed out on the strip so the controller issued it." On the other hand, the MEA from Paris to Dallas is 5000 so flying it at 4 is just as bad as a FL180 mea. There are alot of new controllers in the FAA now (and most of them start training on clearance) so they may not catch errors like these or know to fix them.

The bottom line is, don't accept a clearance that can't be flown. Take care of that problem before you get in the air.
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Also, keep in mind, as you said, whoever works clearance just reads the strip. A clearance guy does not get out a chart and make sure this route makes sense. It has nothing to do with new controller or vet controller. The only advantage a vet may have is they may have seen the route enough that they know something doesn't make sense. It also depends on where the clearance comes from. The clearance are generated at the centers, so if you can't accept a clearance, it can be corrected, it just sometimes takes time. Lets say you are departing out of a small VFR tower Class D airport...the controller may not even have a strip from a printer, it could be one that was given to them by the controlling TRACON, and was handwritten, so that controller must call the TRACON first, and the TRACON may be able to revise it, or they may in turn have to call the center to get it changed. It all depends on the equipment the tower has. I completely agree that you must querry ATC, but I am just simply stating, it is not necessarily a lack of knowledge by the controller, especially if that controller does not work radar at all
 
Here's my advice.

There is no requirement for LIT (or Memphis Center) to assign piston aircraft requesting FL230 or below any STAR into any airport. In fact if your requested altitude is below 10,000 they'll even give you on course instead of a vector through the departure gate. If you filed LIT..DAL they'd clear you as filed. I realize that because of equipment limitations you can't do that, hence the routing you filed which includes the FINGR3 arrival.

Preferential routings are determined by a number of different factors: The destination airport, type aircraft, requested altitude, etc. My guess is since the FINGR3 STAR was in your flight plan, the computer applied the pref routing as LIT.FINGR3 (LIT transition), which would be the appropriate routing for aircraft operating above FL230.

Try this next time and see if it works.

LIT..HOT..PRX..BYP.BYP191.FINGR..DAL
or
LIT..HOT..PRX.PRX263..CVE226.FINGR..DAL

I'm pretty sure LIT will buy off on it, as for Fort Worth Center....your guess is as good as mine, but since its essentially the same as the arrival I don't see why they wouldn't.
 
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