Closing Your Flight Plan

When you have completed your flight and landed at your destination, you must close your flight plan. This tells air traffic services that you have arrived safely and that they no longer need to track your progress or search for you if you become overdue.

If you filed a flight plan before departure, it remains open until you close it. If you do not close your flight plan, air traffic services will eventually contact search and rescue if you fail to arrive at your destination or at your alternate aerodrome by an expected time. This can result in unnecessary search and rescue operations and significant costs and disruption.

To close your flight plan, you must make radio contact with an ATS facility and inform them that you have landed. The most common way is to contact the ATS facility at your destination aerodrome once you have landed. For example:

"Prague Tower, OE-CMV, landed, closing flight plan."

Tower will acknowledge:

"OE-CMV, flight plan closed. Good day."

This simple exchange closes your flight plan officially.