Eurocontrol is to launch a "single European flight plan" in an attempt to manage the increasing occurrence of divergent plans. The pan-European air traffic management agency aims to pursue a series of legislative and technological measures to standardise and simplify flight planning across the continent.
Brian Flynn, head of Eurocontrol's flight plan data section, says differing implementation of flight plan rules across Europe has led to inconsistencies resulting from last-minute changes during taxiing, forcing air traffic controllers to make spontaneous decisions. A Eurocontrol study found that an average of 2.2% of all flight plans filed by flight operations departments differed from those held by air traffic controllers. Eurocontrol also wants to combat the practice of filing "ghost flight plans", where operators of business jets file several consecutive flight plans to avoid slot allocation restrictions, but use only one.
Eurocontrol is to address the problem in three stages. Firstly, next month it will propose legislation through the European Commission to "clarify the responsibility of each actor", namely pilot, flight operations department and air traffic controller. A standardised procedure of acceptance for flight plan alterations will then be established, backed up by a new Eurocontrol flight planning advisory service (EFPAS) to be located at Eurocontrol's Brussels headquarters.
The EFPAS will be available online by the first quarter of next year as a route-finding tool, and a full online flight plan filing service, linked to a common database, will be implemented by 2008, says Flynn. The system will eventually link in with ground-to-air datalinks to automatically update flight plans en route.
Source: Flight International
