Pilots and briefing officers participated in a successful validation of digitally enhanced pre-flight briefing services, held at FREQUENTIS headquarters in Vienna at the end of January 2016.

Under the watchful eyes of human factor experts, the exercise was performed in a simulated Air traffic services reporting office (ARO) environment. An interactive briefing application was used to access SWIM-compliant digitally enhanced flight briefing services, comprising aeronautical information (based on Digital NOTAM) and selected meteorological information.

In today’s operations, the extensive use of ‘classic’ text-based Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) presents a number of challenges: the information in the NOTAM can be difficult to interpret; the combination of many active NOTAMS can lead to very large ‘paper’ Pre-flight Information Bulletins (PIB), sometimes several pages long!

The exercise demonstrated that the graphical presentation of digital information, better filtering and a more logical organisation of the pre-flight information bulletins can improve pilot and dispatcher awareness, reduce briefing times and reduce the risk of information being misunderstood or missed.

The exercise was carried out in the framework of the SESAR project on Aeronautical Information Management, led by FREQUENTIS with participation from EUROCONTROL, THALES, NORACON and ENAV. 

Complementary exercises led by SABRE and Honeywell have addressed airline flight operation centre and business aviation environments for both pre-flight and in-flight phases. As a support to industrialisation and deployment, the project aims to publish a final validation report and specifications by the end of June.