ATC reroutes

Captain

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Final Approach
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Got a question for you ATC types...


It's happened a couple times now where I flight plan a route from NY area to Florida and planed it over the AR routes over DIW NDB. When the FO goes out to pick up the clearance ATC gives us a full route clearance and the new route is over land the whole way.

The first time (last summer) the FO tells me we got a reroute and when I see it I picked up the radio and called clearance and told them 'unable' and made them put me back on the AR routes. We had just enough gas using the AR route and didn't have enough to spare to go around.

Just yesterday it happened again. This time though the distance was comparable...within 15 miles or so. With that in mind I took it, but after we launched I saw a problem. By going along the coast the headwind was straight on the nose. Had we gone towards KILM the wind would have been a good 30 degrees off the nose.

Curses...well I allowed it when I accepted it. The only silver lining was the winds were going to die down as we went south. We made it and landed with reserves...but I'm now going to be much more guarded against this.

So, my question is this: why does ATC give such massive re-routes? I understand changes may be made due to needs and flow, but to jerk you off an AR to go hundreds of miles further inland seems like a big change that they should try to avoid.
 
Did your original routing take you through any warning areas or such? I've found that the distant ATC is more than happy to route you through special use airspace that the controllers down the road aren't going to let you through.
 
Possibly something going on in the Warning Areas or maybe a radar limitation.
 
You know only the airlines get the preferred and shorter AR routes.

I wish they'd let you add your survival eqpt but I'm thinking its related to that in the computers. Only certain ac codes can ly certain of those routes.
 
I filed AR routes the whole way so warning areas aren't an issue. Also, I use the ICAO 2012 codes for equipment codes so that shouldn't be an issue either.

Whatever, we made it and all was well. It just really grinded my gears looking at 100 kts on the nose when my planed route would have been 30 degrees to the left.


Next time I will fire up the iPad and through the 'new' route into fltplan.com and see actual burns and route times before I accept it. It's a learning experiance I guess.

: (
 
comanchepilot said:
You know only the airlines get the preferred and shorter AR routes.

I wish they'd let you add your survival eqpt but I'm thinking its related to that in the computers. Only certain ac codes can ly certain of those routes.
Click to expand...

I've never heard of 'airline only' airways. I fly the AR and Q routes all the time without issue.
 
So they do. For some reason I thought the airway was excluded from the warning area.
 
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