Orion (P3)
Air Traffic Control Fully Certified
Communication Breakdown; Situational Awareness
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
General None Reported / Taken
Human Factors; Procedure
Accepted hand off on an Orion; westbound to NIP from Warning Area/Sealord airspace. Data Block and Flight Progress Strip indicated flight was VFR but aircraft was level at 4;000. After providing advance approach information to pilots; they requested a visual approach to Runway 10 at NIP; which caused me to question the status of the flight since it was showing as VFR. I asked pilot if they were on a VFR or IFR flight plan and was advised they were IFR. I contacted Sealord and was told the aircraft was IFR and that they had amended the flight plan to IFR as it departed the warning area. I told them that the Data Block and flight plan in the NAS indicated the flight was VFR and that this was a potentially very dangerous situation so they needed to ensure accuracy of the information they put in the NAS since the only thing on the flight plan that had anything to do with IFR was a remark in field 11 that read IFR which technically means nothing. Until I changed the Data Block to enable MSAW processing; this IFR flight was not receiving MSAW processing and being handled by the receiving facility (me) as a VFR aircraft. Additionally; the actual flight plan was not properly updated at Sealord so the arrival strip did not even print on the JAX FDIO until a solid 20 minutes after the flight had landed. Upon further research; the flight had departed NIP IFR on a NIP12 stereo flight plan; went VFR in the warning area and then was not updated to reflect current status upon leaving Sealord airspace. These are very common problems with Sealord; they routinely hand traffic off to us that are not properly updated in the NAS and we frequently do not have current and/or accurate strips on the traffic from the warning areas or get them significantly later than is useful to the RADAR controller working the flight. Interaction with Sealord is the most difficult aspect of working at JAX; they get things wrong more often than they get them correct and they do not seem to understand the dangerous element their noncompliance imposes on the RADAR sectors. Recommendation; extensive refresher training of Sealord personnel on proper procedures for NAS flight plan processing; interphone communication protocol and JAX/ZJX LOAs.
JAX Controller described an event where a displayed flight plan status was in fact IFR contrary to all VFR data block indications.