The autorouter platform includes flight plan filing and flight plan management functionality. If your account has flight plan filing privileges, you can create flight plans from your routes, modify the flight plan details and submit them directly to Eurocontrol. Filed flight plans can be cancelled, delayed and brought forward through a simple to use interface, optimized for mobile phone screens. Quick modifications are also possible through SMS and instant messenger.

Prerequisites

In order to file and manage flight plans, you need to obtain flight plan filing privileges from the operators of autorouter. This is necessary because the flight plan system is a system that requires good aeronautical ethics to function well for everybody.

You can request these privileges by selecting the request button on your home screen and agreeing to the terms. Before doing that, you will have to provide your phone number in international format (starting with plus and the country code, such as +491771234568 for Germany and +331111111 for a French number) in the user account settings. Eurocontrol requires us to obtain and verify this information as a means of identifying the users of the flight plan system.

The most important term to which you have to agree is that you will not use the system to file flight plans which you do not intend to fly. Submitting a flight plan to the system allocates capacity in the sectors and airports it involves and thereby might cause delays for other participants.

Filing a flight plan

After you file a flight plan, you will get a confirmation and an email (optionally an SMS if chosen so in the user account settings). Your flight plan is now in the Eurocontrol system and distributed to the relevant ATS units. In most cases, you will be able to depart only a minute after filing but there are guidelines in the AIPs that might require a longer timespan between filing and departing. Our message guarantees you that your flight plan has been successfully transmitted to Eurocontrol.

Cancelling a flight plan

You can cancel every flight plan that is in the FILED state, i.e. you cannot cancel it through our system after the flight went off block. If you wish to cancel, you have to coordinate this with ATC on the ground or in the air and autorouter will eventually reflect that status. A confirmation message is sent to your email (optionally also SMS) on each cancellation.

Delaying a flight plan

Every flight plan that is in the FILED state can be delayed to a later time within the 5 day IFPS planning horizon. It is also possible to delay a flight plan whose estimated off-block time (EOBT) is in the past.

Bringing a flight plan forward

A delay only works when moving a flight plan to a time after the filed estimated off block time. The base system of flight plans does not allow bringing a flight plan forward. We implement this functionality as a series of transparent steps:

1. Check that the flight plan is in the FILED state, i.e. not active yet.
2. Verify that the flight plan validates at the chosen earlier time (it could be that due to the way the Eurocontrol restrictions work, the route is not possible at the earlier time in which case we do not proceed).
3. Cancel the flight plan.
4. File a new flight plan with the identical data and the earlier off-block time as requested.

You will not get a cancel and filing message but instead a “brought forward” message by email and optionally SMS. As this is a multi-step solution, there is a theoretical chance of errors between each step for which you would receive notifications. Make sure you get the “brought forward” message and it shows up in your home screen, otherwise you will have to file the flight plan at the new time through the user interface.

Limitations

autorouter’s flight plan support currently has a few limitations you would like you to be aware of.

1. No support for filing purely-VFR plans, or IFR plans without an IFR segment in the Eurocontrol region.
   We currently submit all flight plans via Eurocontrol’s facilities and due to the limited mandate of Eurocontrol, only flight plans with an IFR segment inside the Eurocontrol region are accepted. Parts of the flight can be VFR or outside the Eurocontrol region but there needs to be a Eurocontrol IFR segment for flight plans to be accepted. We plan to extend our filing infrastructure to direct flight plans to the traditional AFTN telex network for VFR and non Eurocontrol flights.
2. No editing of filed flight plans.
   The flight plan system supports CHG (change) messages to alter details of a flight plan. Most often it is used to supply information that was not known at the time the flight plan was filed — e.g. the aircraft registration (when operating a callsign) or the crew. Currently, this is not supported by autorouter and you would have to cancel and refile in these cases which is very easy with autorouter.
3. Flight plan addressing
   We have developed a sophisticated technology to deal with flight plan addressing, i.e. the question which station addresses a given flight plan should be sent to. For IFR flights, this is handled by Eurocontrol but for VFR segments, the additional addressing is up to autorouter. We only mention this for completeness because we — as everybody else – cannot guarantee 100% accuracy for these addressing rules. In reality it should not be a concern to you.