A Concept to Support Future ATM Operations
INTRODUCTION
The FF-ICE concept is detailed below:
Principles — These are derived from The Global ATM Operational Concept and address the previously identified limitations.
Participants — Reinforce that the FF-ICE concept will require the interaction of multiple participants in a collaborative environment.
- Overall collaborative environment — Describes the information environment within which the FF-ICE is expected to operate.
- Timeline for FF-ICE information provision — Indicates that the flight information process begins up to a year before departure and continues through completion of the planned flight until archiving.
- Scheduled flight scenario — An example of the flight information process is provided to help the reader.
- Formation flights — The example of formation flights is provided to clarify how these are to be treated in the FF-ICE.
- Volume of airspace operations — Indicates the possible need for operations within a volume of airspace distinct from trajectory operations.
PRINCIPLES
The FF-ICE is guided by the requirement to eliminate or reduce the limitations of the present Flight Plan and to accommodate the future environment detailed in the Global Air Traffic Management Operational Concept (Doc 9854).
The principles of the FF-ICE can be summarized as follows:
- provide a flexible concept that allows new technologies and procedures to be incorporated as necessary in a planned manner. This flexibility should also consider the effects of evolving information and communications standards;
- allow aircraft to indicate their detailed performance capabilities, such as the required navigation performance (RNP) level;
- allow for an early indication of intent;
- incorporate information for increased and more automated CDM;
- avoid unnecessary limitations on information;
- support 4D management by trajectory;
- avoid the filing of unnecessary and ambiguous derivable information; adopt a “file-by-exception” philosophy when information cannot be standardized;
- allow for the provision of information security requirements;
- consider the cost impact on providers and consumers of flight information;
- incorporate requirements enabling a broad set of flight mission profiles;
- ensure information is machine-readable and limit the need for free-text information; and
- ensure that definitions of information elements for the FF-ICE are globally standardized.
Regional variation required for performance reasons will be implemented by using different subsets of the standard information elements. New elements will be introduced regionally, through regional extensions as needed, but will not be mandatory for other regions, will not provide duplicate information of existing elements, and should be intended to become part of the global standard. A formal process will be introduced for migrating successful new elements into the standard information.
