Eurocontrol is gearing up for a two-day pan-European exercise aimed at improving airspace efficiency through ensuring that all traffic strictly adheres to flight-planned altitudes.
The 'Flight Level Adherence Days' will be conducted over a 48-hour period on 29-30 September.
During this time flights will not be granted the normal clearance by air traffic controllers to operate at different altitudes to the requested levels in the flight plan.
Such tactical changes to flight trajectories can upset predictions for traffic demand in airspace sectors, rendering them inaccurate.
This can result in inefficient use of capacity as control centres are forced to introduce protective buffers in order to account for the possibility of unexpected traffic.
"Better predictability of traffic due to accurately-flown flight plans would increase the trust in the figures predicted by the Central Flow Management Unit," says Eurocontrol. "Hence, additional capacity could be released to the network."
The broad 'Adherence Days' exercise will build on two localised trials involving the Maastricht and Karlsruhe area control centres.
While aircraft will be cleared to deviate from their planned flight altitude for specific operational reasons - such as an emergency or avoidance of severe weather - controllers will not grant more routine clearances.
Eurocontrol says the exercise will enable it to measure the effects of adherence on flow-control and determine the potential benefits with respect to sector demand.
Source: Air Transport Intelligence news
