Perhaps the confusion comes from many of the things we do all being named similarly: Flight Watch, Flight Plan, Flight Service, Flight Simulation, Flight Following.  Then we have Pre-Flighting an aircraft, Pre-Flight Briefing, Pre-Flight Checklists…it’s beginning to sound like a stuck recording.

At any rate, Flight Following is a service provided to VFR aircraft by the Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC or Center).  This service is not a mandatory requirement of the Centers, it is something they allow only as traffic permits, so they can refuse to provide it, or they can terminate it if IFR traffic increases in the area you are flying through.

Flight Following simply means that you are asking the Center to give you a transponder code so they can track your progress and give you point outs on other aircraft in your area that could come in conflict with your route of flight.  Of course, if you are on Flight Following, they should also keep you advised of your position relative to TFR’s.

It is simple to ask for.  You must have a working transponder of course.  Call the frequency of the Center sector you are currently flying in and request Flight Following.  The Center controller will ask a few questions then give you a squawk code that is associated with a data block on his radar screen.  As you travel, the Center controller will have you change frequencies as you cross the boundaries to other sectors.  When you wish to cancel Flight Following, you go out of radar coverage, or you enter airspace governed by another ATC facility, the Center controller will have you squawk 1200 and say “Frequency Change Approved.”

If you cannot find the frequency of the Center in your area, simply call Radio, give them your position, and ask for it.

Many VFR pilots prefer to use Flight Following instead of filing a flight plan, though both can be used simultaneously.  If an incident should occur while the pilot is on Flight Following, the Search and Rescue (SAR) area is much smaller.

At this point I would like to throw in a caution.  The requirements for instituting Search and Rescue for a Center is very different from that which FSS’s use for VFR pilots.  A Center controller can immediately initiate an ALNOT – the highest level, get-search-planes-in-the-air level of SAR – if he has any reason at all to think that an aircraft is in distress.  This includes anytime a plane he is speaking to goes off radar and off frequency at the same time.

Many VFR pilots feel that since they are VFR, if they don’t want to continue with Flight Following, that they can just change their transponder to 1200 and go to another frequency – you can guess what happens at the Center level.

If you are flying low and get into an area, such as southeastern New Mexico and far Southwest Texas where the radar coverage begins at FL090 or FL100, depending on atmospheric conditions, the Center may simply terminate your Flight Following because they know that you are going to be too low for them to see on radar.

If you find that you are flying along and cannot hear Center anymore, and they do not answer when you call, tune into a Radio or Flight Watch frequency, and tell them that you were on Flight Following and have lost contact with the Center.  We will relay the information to them.  Frequently the Center calls us and asks if we are talking to their missing aircraft, so we may be already looking for your call.

At this point I would also like to throw in some information that you may not be aware of concerning Flight Plans.  If you are on a VFR flight plan and you either pick up Flight Following or change over to IFR due to unexpected weather, the Center does not automatically cancel your VFR flight plan.  You have to do this yourself with Radio.  The Center, Tower and Radio computers are not interlinked in such a way that they can all see what each other are doing.

Say you have filed a flight plan from Amarillo to Eagle Creek Airport north of Indianapolis and somewhere over Kansas your feel the need to have Center keep an eye on you.  Sometimes a pilot goes IFR or picks up Flight Following.  He cancels with Center prior to landing and hangers the aircraft, but Radio still has an open flight plan on him.  Most of the time in this case, SAR is instituted and gets to the INREQ stage at least before all the Centers are required to do a records search.

Flight Following has become mandatory whenever there is a presidential TFR in the area you plan to fly in.  In general each of the presidential TFR’s has two “rings”, a 10 NMR inner ring where no general aviation traffic is permitted at all, and an outer 30 NMR ring where only aircraft that are speaking to Air Traffic and have an assigned squawk code may fly.


Rose Marie Kern works at Lockheed Martin’s ABQ AFSS.  If you’d like to ask Rose a question send her an email at solarranch@aceweb.com.