Simviation Forums

It happens sometimes:

the airport where you want to land is closed for VFR-flights.

But I only fly VFR ....

What do you do when this happens?

1. You land anyway, without clearance
2. You fly around, maybe for houres, waiting till you get your clearance
3. You look for an other airport, one where you are welcome
4. You press P, and wait for an hour or so
5. You close FS9 and go to this forum
6 .....


Or: you don't get permission to leave VFR. What do you do .....


I'm curieus !


(Yes, I land - without permission. After landing I take the first taxistrip, because of muttering ATC ... next day there are as nice as ever, so don't worry)

mmm....find another airport would I suppose be OK....or you could change the weather to clear or something nice...LOL..commoner

It will be interesting what the "real" pilots on the Forum reply.

I would imagine that you declare an emergency with ATC at your overcast airport/airfield, expecially if you are running short of fuel, and get their assistance to guide you to the nearest airfield with better landing conditions.

Air Traffic Control are very good at looking after you if you are in trouble and will assist you to land safely.
(The Military section are also very helpful when in difficulty).

Cheers all... ...!

Paul...another VFR only pilot.. ...!

P.S. Obviously, none of this will work in the Flight Sim, but it will be interesting feed-back from the "real" pilots out there... ...!

Are you using real world weather?  If the airport is under IFR conditions, VFR cannot land there, you'd have to file an IFR flight plan.  If that's not the problem, you're doing something wrong In real life there are certain airports closed to normal VFR traffic (private, really really busy airports although rarely do they not accept VFR) but in fs you should be able to land anywhere.  What exactly does the controller say? Wait a minute.... you land with... with... WITHOUT CLEARANCE??!!#??$!!%??  AHHHHHHHH!  :o :-/

lol, I've never been denied landing clearance glying VFR, mainly because I check the atis report for the airport I'm going to, and if they are only accepting IFR traffic due to weather, I'lll find another airport close to the destination that is above weather...

From the sounds of it you are a VFR only pilot treading into IFR IMC conditions which could be very dangerous in real life...;-)

It will be interesting what the "real" pilots on the Forum reply.

I would imagine that you declare an emergency with ATC at your overcast airport/airfield, expecially if you are running short of fuel, and get their assistance to guide you to the nearest airfield with better landing conditions.

I would never declare an emergency.  Aside from doing a whole lot of paperwork and spending hours with some really angry people declaring a false emergency is just wrong.  There are untold numbers of people you would endanger everywhere from other pilots and their passengers, to the emergency response units on the ground.  If I were ever caught in that situation I'd just amend my flight plan to be either IFR or SVFR if I couldn't divert.  That way ATC would fold me into the deck without hesitation.  The best way to avoid that situation altogether is to do what Jared suggested.  I check ATIS and AWOS a few times an hour along my routes, flight following doesn't hurt either.

I lost my license, I see .... I'll send it to Beefhole.


I allways fly in real weather but when you fly 200nm. or more you don't know what to expect.

"Airport is closed for VFR-flights" is all you hear - they don't tell you how long it's gone take.

Checking ATIS and weatherreports? That's only possible when you are within 30 nm. of the airport. So, how do you check an ATIS-report for the airport you are going to if it's more than 30 nm. away? Lots of airport don't even have there own ATC.

Actually, I was flying in Bolivia, from Potesi to Santa Cruz. Potesi is high in the mountains (clear skies), Santa Cruz at the foot of the mountain, lots of fog. No possibility of checking on the route(: no airports on the route).
And no more fuel .... but I agree, that's my own mistake.

In real-life VFR flying, you not only need to check before you go (call them if they have a phone at the airport), you need to monitor the nearest ATIS or AWOS you can find enroute, or get Flight Watch on the radio (usually you listen to FW on a VOR frequency- I'm not sure now if MSFS has that info available [which VORs have that capability]). As for declaring an emergency, that's always an option, but you should plan to have enough fuel when you arrive to go somewhere else if necessary. Forget the FAA rules as to minimum reserves- make sure you have enough to go somewhere likely to be clear, given the big weather picture that day. I like to have an hour's worth of "extra" fuel  myself, regardless of weather.  I'm not sure how you arrived at a socked-in airport while flying in VMC... fog, maybe? Ground fog is one of those things that can kill you if you follow the FAA rules- you're allowed to fly over it, but my rule of thumb is: if you can't see a clear area along your route (and think you could glide to it if your engine quit), don't fly over fog. Any number of emergencies could require you to land immediately (on or off-airport), and if the ground is cloaked in fog, you're in big trouble.

I lost my license, I see .... I'll send it to Beefhole.

Nah, that's all right.

In real life, if the weather turnes foul, as long as you can keep visual contact with the runway, you can land.  Otherwise, I would ask ATC how long until the weather clears and just hold for a while.

Of couse in FS you can land anywhere without permission.

If you want to get accurate RW ATIS that relates to FS then download and use Servinfo, log onto either Vatsim or IVAO and use the weather option to get accurate METAR for any airport in the world.

To make it even more accurate download Activesky and use that which gives better weather IMO than MS realweather anyway and is the same as Vatsim weather on servinfo so you will never have that problem again.

You dont have to fly on Vatsim to use it

I use to work as a load planner for Delta Air Lines in KJAX. Airpots can and do close to both IFR and VFR traffic due to weather, and it makes it interesting if you are one of the planes stuck in what is called a loop( that is when you have to fly around in circles at the holding place for the airport you are trying to get to.) The problem is each airport can only have so many airplanes in a given airspace and it is like cars in a multilevel parking garage they just stack up on top of each other. After a while that space fills up and any other planes have no choice they must go someplace else. That is why all real world flight plans have a alternate airport just in case
I rember one night when both KATL and KMCO closed due to weather all other traffic to both airports were directed to KJAX we had 30 planes on the ground at one time talk about crazy.

Lots of possibilities, I see. Still, if you are on the road (... in the air) it's difficult to predict the weather before you - it can change, I guess.

Glad I may keep my license! (but I don't tell everything: it's MY world, where I'm flying, and I make my own rules. If I don't like the runway ATC gives me, I take an other one; taxiing sometimes I pass an airplane if it's taxing to slow ... O yes, in real life I was banned from the skies for ever, nor even allowed to look up ...).

I'm afraid of the new answer of Beefhole  ....

This is interesting!  Hopefully Microsoft will address in FS10 making things even more realistic!

That "kinda" happened to me once. I was returning from KFDY to KOSU. When I left KOSU it was marginal VFR, both airports and looked to improve as the day went on. Of course it did not. About 40nm from KOSU @ 3500ft the rain started. By the time I was within reporting distance to request a full-stop.. the ceilings were getting below 1000agl. KOSU is a University/public airport with a 200+ member flight club (loaded with students) and