Gettin Tec-Route savvy

The vast majority of my flying has been east of the Mississippi. However, the end of last year found me traversing the other coast from Mexico to the Canadian border during a two-day evaluation of a VLJ pilot based outside San Francisco. Our second leg of the trip had us in Santa Monica, ready to depart for San Diego, when ATC pitched us a nasty curve.My clients call to Clearance Delivery was answered with the query, Do you have the Santa Monica November routes onboard? My client looked at me with a puzzled glance. After my own initial confusion (The what?), followed by a smart-aleck impulse (Well if we do, whats it worth to you if we let them go?) I just shook my head to indicate I didnt know what the controller was talking about either.You could hear the exasperation in the controllers voice as she realized we were going to have to do this the hard way, and proceeded to read us one of the most complex clearances Ive received in quite some time. Once my client had read back the clearance, I asked the controller what that was about November routes. Theyre canned routes, sometimes you have them in the beginning of your book, she enigmatically responded.

Key Takeaways:

• Pilots may encounter "Tower En Route Control" (TEC) routes, which are pre-published, complex clearances found in flight manuals like Jeppesen or the A/FD, often unfamiliar to pilots outside specific regions.
• Complex ATC clearances involving specific radial intercepts often require pilots to create user waypoints in their GPS for accurate and automated navigation.
• Handling in-flight ATC instructions to intercept a specific leg demands using the "activate leg" function in a GPS, rather than a simple "direct-to" command, to ensure correct course tracking.
• The experience underscores the importance for IFR pilots to master advanced navigation techniques, including TEC route knowledge, user waypoint creation, and specific GPS leg activation, to handle challenging ATC clearances.

Key takeaways sponsored by Aviator Pro | Start Your Training ->

See a mistake? Contact us.