November 12 2011, File a flight plan day

The discussion panel for helicopters in the 2012 Olmpics

It has been a quiet time for helicopters in the recent months. However, there is still the ongoing discussion about what helicopters and private aviation can and cannot do during the Olympic period. One thing all aircraft will have to do, if they wish to enter or leave the restricted area (they are not allow into the prohibited area around the actualy Olympic site) is file a flight plan.  So, to this end the CAA had a practice day on 12th November 2011, when anybody flying needed to file a flight plan. They are awaiting the results, but so far they seem very upbeat about the situation saying it proved a great success:
"Nearly 800 flight plans were filed by pilots as part of the File a Flight Plan Day practice on Saturday 12 November 2011, providing excellent data and feedback for both pilots and organisers. The Airspace & Safety Initiative (ASI) event encouraged GA pilots to file a test flight plan to familiarise themselves with the process and learn what they need to do next year to continue flying during the Olympics with the minimum of disruption."
Dawn Lindsey, from the CAA’s Directorate of Airspace Policy, said: “The response from pilots was excellent and I’d like to thank everyone for their efforts and feedback. Some people were so eager to participate that we had 12 flight plans submitted before the test even started!
“We learned some really valuable lessons around the RAF flight plan processing system, the automated flight planning systems currently available such as SkyDemon Light and some common flight plan errors that we can work on.”
All 788 flight plans received will now be analysed and full feedback will be provided later this year. Atlas Control and NATS will work with SkyDemon to further improve the interface between the systems and more educational material on successful flight planning will be published through ASI.