Flight plans and associated messages

Everything an ATS unit sends and receives: what order it gets dealt with, and how it is addressed.

The five codes run in a strict order of their own: an SS is dealt with ahead of a DD, a DD ahead of an FF, and so on down. They are not the same list as the three categories above. Emergency messages travel as SS or DD, movement and control as FF, and the NOTAM and weather that make up much of flight information as GG. KK is administrative traffic rather than an ATS message at all.

Six cases.

Fifteen things.

The fifteen are what the plan has to say, in the order and the numbering of SERA.4005(a). The three groupings are this page’s, to make the list learnable. The numbered Items in the tool further down are the boxes on the form, and the two do not line up one for one.

On the ground through IFPS, or in the air as an AFIL.

AFIL means the flight plan was filed in the air. The course notes also gloss it as the abbreviated flight plan, which is a separate thing: the limited information needed to get a clearance for part of a flight. The two overlap, because a plan filed in the air usually is abbreviated, but they are not the same term.

1. SubmitThe pilot gives ATS the information.
2. FileATS accepts it. It is a filed flight plan from then on.
3. TransmitIt is shared on to everyone who needs it.

The three hours goes with flow management, not with crossing a border and not with IFPS as such. In practice it is the IFR flights that go through IFPS, because every flight operating as general air traffic under IFR in European airspace may be regulated. A VFR flight is not, so for VFR it is the hour. The 120 hours is the IFPS rule above.

One real flight plan, Copenhagen to Heathrow, as it goes out over the AFTN. Click any part of it: the panel gives that field, and the codes that go in it. The three addresses and the originator come first, then the message itself.

A real message carries more than the lesson list. Past it here: E2, E3, F, I and R in the COM/NAV field, L and B1 for surveillance, and PBN/, SEL/, OPR/ and PER/ in Item 18. They are decoded anyway, so the message reads whole.

Supplementary information, carried for emergencies and for search and rescue. It is not part of the flight plan message, which is why none of it is in the one above, and not something a FISO sees. Worth knowing it exists.

E/ is number 12 of the fifteen further up, P/ is 13, and R/ through D/ are 14: fuel or energy endurance, persons on board, and emergency and survival equipment. That is the part of what a flight plan has to contain which never travels in the message. Number 15, other information, is Item 18, and that does travel. A/, N/ and C/ are the form’s own, past the fifteen.

From filed to closed, what it is called at each stage, and who sends the two messages that move it.

Five messages, across six tabs, because ARR comes in two forms. CHG modifies, CNL cancels, DLA delays, DEP activates and ARR closes. Each one names the flight, so the right plan can be found again.

SERA.8020. Three rules, and they bind the flight once it is under way.

Every table in the tool above, in one place. Open the ones you want; Expand all opens the lot, and printing opens them for you. The colours are the groups in the message.