Inserting a Waypoint in the Flight Plan
In the IFR world, ATC may occasionally add new legs to a flight plan after the pilot has taken off. These deviations are given for a number of reasons varying from closed airspace, traffic avoidance, and even weather.
Often, the deviation will include a point between two that are already loaded into the Garmin’s flight plan. This necessitates that a new waypoint be inserted between the two you already have.
I'm going to present a scenario - a simple IFR flight - and then walk through the process of inserting a new waypoint into a flight plan I have already programed in.
We received a clearance from Boeing field to the SEA VOR, Direct CARRO intersection, V27 to the HQM VOR, then Direct to the HQM airport. Entered into the Garmin, it would look like this:
And, to keep it fairly straight forward, here's what that looks like on a low enroute chart:
In our scenario, everything goes according to plan until you're about 10 miles from CARRO intersection. ATC has a change of plans for us. For some reason (another airplane, weather, you name it), we're going to have to re-route to fly from CARRO to OLM, then V204 to HQM. The new route would look like this:
Almost all the fixes stay the same, but we would like to fly to OLM from CARRO instead of straight to the HQM VOR. Time to insert the OLM waypoint!
1. Push the Flightplan button (FPL) on your Garmin.
2. Turn on the cursor (push in on small knob) and scroll down (big knob) to the two waypoints which you’d like to put the new fix in between. The cursor should be on the bottom of the two. In our case, we'd like to put the OLM fix between CARRO and HQM, so we'd put the cursor on HQM:
3. Begin twisting the small (inner) knob. It looks as if you might be changing the waypoint you had highlighted but this is not the case. Simply type in the ID of your new waypoint (a VOR, intersection, NDB, airport… anything) and when you’re done, push Enter.
Sometimes you'll get an odd question, like this one:
The GPS is asking if you'd like the VOR called HQM in North Western USA or the one called OLM in Ecuador. Just push Enter on the one you prefer.
4. The new waypoint has been entered between the two you already had!
Safe flying!
-John Fiscus
Chief Pilot
The Flight Academy
www.theflightacademy.com 
Posted
14 Jul 2009 14:44
by
John Fiscus