Improved planning thanks to enriched data
Air navigation service providers use aircraft flight plan data to plan and schedule air traffic in order to balance airspace supply and demand. In Europe’s future trajectory‑based flight environment, where aircraft can fly their preferred flight paths without being constrained by airspace configurations, flight plan data will include additional information, which will allow both the Network Manager and the air traffic control units to have a more precise plan of how the aircraft will fly.
The extended flight plan (EFPL) goes beyond the ICAO minimum requirements for aircraft flight plans, which were updated in 2012, with yet more operational data. In addition to trajectory data and aircraft performance data (compared to the ICAO flight plan), a key part of the concept allows for applied airspace management constraints and accepted trajectories to be sent from the Network Manager to the airspace users.
The EFPL includes further information relevant to each point of the aircraft’s trajectory, for example speed and aircraft mass, as well as other performance data such as planned climb and descent profiles. This allows both air traffic control and the Network Manager to improve their prediction of the trajectory. This is especially relevant in complex airspace, because it allows better flow management, and also improves the performance of the conflict detection and resolution tools used by controllers.
The EFPL aims to reduce flight plan rejections by the Network Manager and increase traffic predictability.
Concerning the flight plan rejections, the use of 15 data fields in the ICAO flight plan is open to different
interpretations resulting in unwarranted flight plan rejections. The validation of this SESAR solution has
included the refinement of the data exchange processes and shows that EFPL significantly reduces flight plan rejections compared to those associated with the ICAO 2012 flight plan validation process.
The solution is available for industrialisation and is part of synchronised deployment
SJU references: #37/Release 5
Benefits
- Improved network predictability
- Enhanced safety
- Improved performance of conflict detection and resolution tools
Datapack