Purpose and Scope

This page and its child pages contain the coding guidelines for the minimum and conditional data items of the Route and Route Segment subjects as defined in PANS-AIM.

PANS-AIM Appendix 1 (Aeronautical Data Catalogue) distinguishes between "ATS route" which is defined as:

A specified route designed for channelling the flow of traffic as necessary for the provision of air traffic services

and "Other route" which is defined as:

A specified route designed for channelling the flow of traffic as necessary without provision of air traffic services

For the AIXM coding guidelines no difference is made between ATS route and Other route.

AIP context

In an AIP, Routes are published in the following sections:

ENR 3.1 Lower ATS routes
ENR 3.2 Upper ATS routes
ENR 3.3 Area navigation routes
ENR 3.4 Helicopter routes
ENR 3.5 Other routes

The term Route is used to mean variously, airway, advisory routes, controlled or uncontrolled routes, etc. excluding arrival and departure routes.

AIXM Model Overview

The figure below shows the main AIXM 5.1(.1) classes used for the route concept.

A Route consists of one or more RouteSegment. A route is identified by its designator, which consists of three main elements: a designatorPrefix (e.g. 'U' for Upper), a designatorSecondLetter (e.g. 'L'), a designatorNumber (e.g '601'). In addition, the multipleIdentifier corresponds to an additional letter that appears sometimes in a route designator (e.g 'A' for an alternate route). The route designator suffix specified in the ICAO Annex 11, which indicates the level of traffic separation service (e.g. 'F' for an advisory route) is modelled with the RouteSegment.designatorSuffix, as it could be applicable to just a few segments of a longer route. The locationDesignator attribute goes beyond the ICAO requirements and it allows indicating the geographical location of a route, using for example country codes or region codes.

Each RouteSegment starts at and ends at an EnRouteSegmentPoint, whereas the start point of a following route segment is the end point of the previous one. The en-route segment points are a choice of SignificantPoint. For route segments that may be a Navaid, a DesignatedPoint or in rare cases also the ARP of an AirportHeliport. See also SignificantPoint (Overview).

The upperLimit and the lowerLimit attributes correspond to the vertical extent of the RouteSegment, with additional vertical constraints being modelled with attributes such as minimumObstacleClearanceAltitude, minimumEnrouteAltitude, etc. The RouteSegment is further defined by a length,a trueTrack and/or a magneticTrack. Also a requiredNavigationPerformance value may be provided.

Each route segment may have a RouteSegmentAvailability. The availability of a route segment includes an association with the predefined series of cruise levels (odd or even) defined by the StandardLevelColumn.

A controlling Unit may provide InformationService or AirTrafficControlService on a RoutePortion, using one or more RadioCommunicationChannel.

For VOR-defined routes, a ChangeOverPoint may be specified for a certain RoutePortion.

AIXM 5.2 Improvements

A change proposal (AIXM-519) for the next AIXM 5.2 version has been approved by the AIXM Change Control Board, in which an association is added to the Route class to allow for classification using AircraftCharacteristic attributes.

The coding guidelines provided here are aligned with forward/backward conversion rules contained in the AIXM-519 Change Proposal.

Coding Examples

The figure below gives a simple example of a route with designator "UP96", containing several route segments defined by en-route segments points, which may be a designated point or a navaid.

The unit "Amswell ACC" is providing air traffic service on the route segment starting at the enroute segment point "HDO and ending at the enroute segment point HDO10" on frequency "120.300 MHZ". The route is available "forward" with series of levels "Odd" and "backward" with series of levels "Even".

More coding examples can be found in the AIP Data Set - Specimen (DONLON).

No.	Description	XPath Expression
RTE-EX-01	Lower ATS Route	//aixm:RouteTimeSlice[@gml:id ='RTE_A6']
RTE-EX-02	Upper ATS Route	//aixm:RouteTimeSlice[@gml:id ='RTE_UA4']
RTE-EX-01	RNAV Route	//aixm:RouteTimeSlice[@gml:id ='RTE_UL123']
RTE-EX-01	Helicopter Route	//aixm:RouteTimeSlice[@gml:id ='RTE_HK123']
RSG-EX-01	Route segment of Lower ATS route (incl. MEA)	//aixm:RouteSegmentTimeSlice[@gml:id='RSG_A6_BOR_ROB'] \|
RSG-EX-02	Route segment of Upper ATS route	//aixm:RouteSegmentTimeSlice[@gml:id='RSG_UA4_BARIM_WOB']
RSG-EX-03	Route segment of RNAV route	//aixm:RouteSegmentTimeSlice[@gml:id='RSG_UL123_ABOLA_ILURU']
RSG-EX-04	Route segment of Lower ATS route (incl. MOCA)	//aixm:RouteSegmentTimeSlice[@gml:id='RSG_A6_ROB_ROK']

Child Pages

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