Overview

Family 5.6.1 – Flight Information Exchange comprises five FF-ICE/R1 Services provided by NM. Three of them must be consumed by the ANSPs within the geographical scope.

This handbook gives guidance to help ANSPs satisfy the CP1 requirements in relation to FF-ICE/R1.

Consuming NM's Data Publication Service

Business justification

The eFPL content can be leveraged by the ANSPs in order to perform improved trajectory prediction for a variety of ATM functions. This would include (non exhaustive list):

• Balancing demand against capacity more accurately
• Providing complementary feedback in response to the distributed eFPLs, i.e. being able to fine-tune the 4DT portion applicable to their AOR;
  
  • See also Implementation Strategy for FPFDE NFPM, chapters 3.3 Pre-Departure Phase – Flight Planning and Filing and 4.1 Finalising the flight planning/filing phase with an Agreed Trajectory
• Facilitating AUs’ adherence to their preferred trajectories as much as possible, leading to more efficient and sustainable flights.

Conformity Checklist

The following table summarises the requirements that need to be satisfied in order for an ANSP to achieve the goal Consuming NM's Data Publication Service.

Consuming NM's Flight Data Request Service

Business justification

CP1 mandates ANSPs to consume the eFPL via the Data Publication Service and to consume the Notification Service, using the NM B2B services. As a result, ANSPs will start receiving FF-ICE Messages relevant to their operations, including eFPLs filed by Airspace Users and approved by NM, and at a later stage FF-ICE Departure and Arrival Messages for the concerned flights. These messages will be pushed to ANSPs by the Publish/Subscribe interface of the NM B2B Services and will have to be correlated using the GUFI. In certain non-nominal situations, when for instance pushed messages expire before they are consumed by the client application, ANSPs might exceptionally receive FF-ICE Messages that cannot be correlated to an eFPL, or may be uncertain regarding the status of a given flight. In these situations, the ANSPs are expected to obtain the latest eFPL (& GUFI), or the latest flight status information, using of the Flight Data Request service provided by NM.

Conformity Checklist

The following table summarises the requirements that need to be satisfied in order for an ANSP to achieve the goal Consuming NM's Flight Data Request Service.

Consuming NM's Notification Service

Business justification

TODO

Conformity Checklist

The following table summarises the requirements that need to be satisfied in order for an ANSP to achieve the goal Consuming NM's Notification Service

NM B2B
Flight Management Service
&
Subscription Management Service

Requirements

Guidance for Consuming the Flight Data Request Service, using the NM B2B services.

Which NM B2B services to use?

Consume the Flight Data Request Service, using the NM B2B services means

Requirements

Guidance for Consuming the Notification Service using the NM B2B services

Requirements

Connection to NM B2B Services

An ANSP shall sign an agreement with NM in order to be able to consume the NM B2B Services.

• Rationale: Access to the NM B2B Services is subject to eligibility and usage conditions.
•  Guidance:
  • First check whether your organisation is already using the B2B Services.
  • Depending on whether your organization is already using the B2B Services or not, you may apply for initial or additional access.
  • The form for requesting access to NM B2B services can be found here: https://www.eurocontrol.int/network-operations/access-service-request-form.

An ANSP shall request access to the following NM B2B services:

• the NM B2B Flight Management service and the NM B2B Subscription Management service, for the purpose of
  • receiving the EFPLs filed by eAUs and accepted by NM,
  • receiving changes in flight plan acceptance occurring any time after the filing,
  • receiving relevant notifications of departures and arrivals;
• the NM B2B Flight Data Request service, for the purpose of retrieving on-demand eFPL information, including the eFPL acceptance status anytime after the filing;
• the NM B2B Notification service, for the purpose of submitting notifications of departures and arrivals.

 Rationale:

• See FF-ICE in the NM B2B for details.
• The FlightManagement service is the NM B2B service that supports the distribution of eFPLs to ANSPs. Its Publish/Subscribe (P/S) interface will push the eFPLs to the client applications having subscribed to the FF-ICE Flight Plan topic.
• The SubscriptionManagement service provides facilities to create and manage subscriptions, allowing the users to define which kind of data they are interested in receiving via the NM B2B Publish Subscribe Services. The consumption of these two services is therefore necessary for an ANSP in order to receive eFPLs.
• ...

Guidance:

• ...

An ANSP shall manage its subscription to the NM B2B Flight Management service appropriatetely using the NM B2B Subscription Management so that it receives all the eFPLs (with any subsequent change changes to their acceptance status), and all the notifications of departure and arrivals relevant to their operations.

Development and testing

An ANSP shall develop and test its B2B client application for retrieving eFPLs using the PREOPS platform.

• Rationale: NM deploys the NM B2B services on distinct platforms with distinct purposes, enabled services, data and access. The main purpose of the PREOPS platform is to support the development and testing of B2B client applications without impacting the operations. This platform is also used to validate the correct behaviour of client applications and to assess their readiness to be connected to the Operational platform.
• Guidance:

Validation

An ANSP having performed the necessary developments and being technically ready to go operational shall get their client application validated by NM for operational usage.

• Rationale: the operational use of the B2B Services will be allowed only after the ANSP has successfully executed the NM acceptance validation processes. This process is established in order to make sure that only client applications with correct behaviour use the operational system.
  

• Guidance:
  • Any official request to apply the present procedure shall be officially addressed to the NM email address: NM.servicerequests@eurocontrol.int
  • The evaluation will be based on the test case "EFPL FILING (FIXM FORMAT) – TEST CASES" described in NM B2B's Business documentation for Flight Plan Filing
  • More details: https://ost.eurocontrol.int/sites/B2BWS/Shared%20Documents/7%20-%20Business%20Documentation/Flight%20Plan%20Filing%20Use%20Cases.pdf

Guidance on the requirements