Flight progress display
What a flight progress display is
A display of current flight plan data: the record of the flights in the relevant area, on paper or on a screen. It is how a unit remembers a flight, and how the next person on the position picks it up.
Where the data on it comes from
Almost all of it is lifted off the flight plan. Here is the strip from the lesson and the plan it was printed from. The parts of the plan that reach the strip are picked out in blue; click any box below to see which is which.
The strip from the lesson, box by box. Click any field: what it is, and where it came from. The flight plan it was printed from is above.
FIN4630Printed from the flight planThe call sign, straight off the front of the flight plan: (FPL-FIN4630-IS. FIN is the Finnair designator from LAW 003, and 4630 the flight identification. It is printed largest because it is what the whole strip is about.
Three boxes are not on the plan. The SSR code was assigned by ATS, the estimate over ESTER was worked out, and the SID replaces the point the plan actually names. A strip is not a copy of a flight plan: it carries what this unit needs to work the flight, in the form this unit needs it.
Keeping it current
The printed data is only the start. Everything after it is written on by hand, and the rules are strict because somebody else has to read it.
Every clearance, every instruction, and every piece of information passed to the flight.
Levels, and the passing of points.
The box should never have said that. Two horizontal lines through it, the right value in the same box. Erasures must not be made: what was there has to stay readable.
The box was right and is now out of date. One line through it, the new value in the same box.
- Black ink. Ball point, or felt or nylon tipped.
- Printed capitals, and handwriting that is neat, clear and concise.
- Arabic numerals for figures.
- Times in four digits, hours and minutes. Minutes alone are allowed where there is no risk of confusion.
Paper strips, and the board
A paper strip is not loose paper. It clips into a holder, the holder sits in a bay, and the bay stands for a place.
No universal standard. Every ANSP, and every unit inside one, designs the layout that suits it. Most units run several: one for departures, one for arrivals, one for transits. An area control centre may even split eastbound from westbound.
Strips, electronic strips, stripless
Two families. Strips, which come on paper or on a screen, and stripless systems, which have none at all.
Printed by a strip printer, marked by pen, held in a board. Still the common thing in a control tower.
PrintedThe same layout, colours and management, on a screen. Edited much the way a label is edited in a stripless system.
On screenNo strip at all. Everything moves into the label, the lists and the windows of the ATM system. Where area control has been heading for years.
No strips| Paper strips | Electronic strips |
|---|---|
| Paper links to nothing No connection to the safety nets, or to an Advanced Surface Movement Guidance and Control System. | Electronic links to the system Feeds the safety features, and can warn early when a clearance conflicts. |
| Paper shares nothing Update a strip and the only way it reaches anyone else is by speaking to them. | Electronic shares instantly The update is coordinated the moment it is made. |
| Paper can be unreadable Poor handwriting, a misspelling, or an entry put in the wrong box. | Electronic shows more Colour, shade and font carry what a pen cannot: a field being updated, coordinated, or passed to the crew. |
| Paper survives a failure Immune to power and software failures. Nothing to reboot. | |
| Paper is more flexible Any free space can be written on, not only the fields the system provides. |
The stripless display
The data does not disappear. It moves into the picture: onto the aircraft’s label, and into lists beside it.
Two traps in the word track. The course picture points at the trail of dots and calls them the track, while the definition printed underneath it describes the correlated report instead. The trail is history dots; a track is what a flight plan gets correlated with. And neither is the magnetic track of LAW 005, which is a direction.
All three are requirements of Regulation (EU) 2017/373, the ATM/ANS common requirements. Everything else about a label is the system designer’s choice: which fields are interactive, what the colours mean, how much the extended label shows.
The label is not the whole of it. The system builds lists alongside: traffic due in, traffic departing, whatever a sector needs to plan with. A holding pattern usually gets one of its own, because a hold is exactly where labels pile on top of one another.
Ground based safety nets
Alerts to a potential or actual infringement of separation minima, in time to act on it.
Alerts to unauthorised penetration of a volume of airspace.
Alerts to an aircraft getting close to terrain or obstacles.
The same warning as MSAW, on final approach.
All four run off electronically processed flight data, which is the other thing a stripless system buys. The equipment subject takes them properly.
Passing the update on
A change is no use sitting on one unit’s display. Every unit the flight plan still concerns has to get it.
Someone speaks to the next unit. It works everywhere and needs nothing, which is why it is still the fallback.
On-Line Data Interchange: the European standard for passing coordination between ATS units automatically. Going paperless is what makes this work end to end.