CFMU E-Helpdesk
 

A replacement to the current CFMU telephone Helpdesk has been developed. It is called the E-Helpdesk. It has been in operational use since January of this year with an increasing number of users.

ALL airlines and flight handling agents will be given access from 22nd June 2011. The telephone Helpdesk service will be reduced from 29th June. The E-Helpdesk will have priority over the telephone helpdesk from the 29th June.

We would like to encourage all business jet operators with operations centres to transfer their Helpdesk queries to the E-Helpdesk system.

The E-Helpdesk is accessed through the protected NOP portal. If you have a software token to access the NOP you will automatically have access from 22nd June. You will have to log out and log in again to activate the service

A short training package is available at: \\cfmufs01\group\OPSD\Support\TC\internal_user_guides\CFMU_E-Helpdesk\cfmu_ehelpdesk_viewlet_swf.html

The system is very easy to use and it will take no more than 20 minutes for your staff to follow the tutorials.

If you are a bizjet operator and cannot access the E-Helpdesk (pilot on duty for example) please PM me and I will send instructions on how to overcome this problem.
Thanks,
flowman

I wonder if our Eurocontrol charges will decline in line with the proposed reduced level of service? Of course they won't!

The telephone help line is a service vital to the needs of us in the biz jet world, and especially to those who may not have the full support of an ops department. The staff are mostly helpful, and problems are generally solved in less than 30 seconds or so. Sometimes of course it is not possible to resolve delays, but immediate contact with someone enables us to convey the reasons and likely outcome to our passengers!!

What are we supposed to do now? Tell our passengers that everything will be taken care of as soon the crew nip back to the terminal to email Flow Control and wait for their reply?

Flowman, I appreciate that you are only the messenger, and I applaud you for working on something that may partly ease the situation, but I suspect that neither you, or those higher up in your food chain, have ever suffered the wrath of a passenger who has been given the news that there is no news!

And another thing! Why does your telephone help line answer immediately, and then pipe me a "thank you message" for calling, while I wait for someone to talk to? Did it not occur to the designer of that system that pilots would be calling from around the globe, using extortionate mobile phone rates? What is wrong with a connection ONLY when someone is ready and available to take a call? End of rant.

Guys,

If you want to discuss the policy how about opening a new thread so the Mods can put a sticky on this very useful and helpful info.

Flowman, you are a goodman as well, thank you

MM

clivewatson +1 (also on the messenger part)

I can understand that if you work in an organization such as Eurocontrol where possibly everything is done by a workgroup (we don´t have to be cost effective, do we? After all, if our approach to things costs more, there is the never ending spring of user fees that we just can adjust...) its hard to understand that there is people out there that work without backup. Without operations. Without a computer that is permanently online.

But as usual with eurocontrol, we will not be heard, we will be ignored.

:ugh: :ugh: :ugh: Actually I´d require a vomiting smiley.

Flowman, could you please post the email address of the guy in charge?


No backoffice therefore no CFMU-NOP access when not in office. So if the telephone helpline is shut down we MUST have something to use in the cockpit. And that is not only because of the flexibility of my pax, but to be able to cope with all the crap that can go wrong when flying (no coach available to take you to the airplane, congestion at the security check, handling agent vanished and not reachable via phone, fuel late, catering late, gnd freq congested etcetcetc)

To use a computer - handheld or not - is definately less effective and takes longer than using a phoneline.

Flowman
This is a serious issue and I hope that now you have given us the bad news you will not dissappear and not reply and address the issues members on this forum are raising. I will re-iterate what others have said: many GA operators do NOT have access to a computer when they need CFMU help. They are probably sitting in the cockpit with ranting passengers behind them.

GA operators have long suffered from the "airline" aproach taken by Eurocontrol. One of the biggest bugbears is why cannot an aircraft leave early on its flightplan if there is no delay? The answer I have always received is that the "system" was designed that way because "airlines" never want to go early. In GA that is different, our passengers may turn up (without any warning) 1 or 2 hours early. The procedure we are told to follow is "cancel and refile". Fine if you are at a computer. Also the danger of doing that is that by cancelling the original flight plan one may pick up a long delay sometimes even after the first flight plan departure time!! It seems to work in the USA/Canada so why not here so please do not answer this one with "it could not work"

We in GA pay a diproportionate amount in Eurocontrol fees compared to the airlines based on both aircraft weight and passengers carried but we are not being listened to.

Flowman, we do not want to shoot the messenger but PLEASE forward our comments on to those who make the decisions and also please keep contributing to this forum so we can monitor progress (or more likely the lack of it)

Well I'm glad I posted now.

The name of the guy in charge is me, as invited at the top of the thread you can PM me any time. There was no working group, there are two of us. We have access to a team of engineers who have developed this very quickly on top of their existing projects.

My purpose for posting was:
1) to alert you all to our proposals
2) to reach out to the bizjet community to try to establish your requirements

From my own experience I am aware that CFMU flow management activities and ETFMS in particular work best for scheduled operators. I will NOT be leaving the bizjet community out in the cold. If we have to leave the phonelines open until a solution can be found for you all then that is what will have to happen.

This has quite serious implications for Flow Management though, and for the wider aviation community. We have almost become a call centre. We will receive more than likely around 1500 calls per day this summer. There are 6 people to answer those calls at the same time as doing what you pay us to do, to provide a flow management service.

The best way to reduce delays is to manage flows of traffic, not to deal with the delays one flight at a time which is what happens at the helpdesk.

You will not be ignored, you have been heard. Just a shame we have to discuss this on a public forum rather than through official channels (nobody seems to respond to those) but at least we are now talking.

I proposed the m-Helpdesk specifically with bizjet operators in mind. I am well aware the impact of the withdrawal of the telephone helpdesk will have on your operations, that's why I posted here.

I have to put together a business case so that someone with a budget (I don't have one) will pay for it. As requested please PM me all the good reasons you have for needing it and I can get things moving.

I will be happy to meet, write to, visit, arrange visits, present or represent your views anytime. So please contact me. I will give you my work address if you PM me and mobile number if you need it, I am available H24.

flowman

Flowman
Thanks for replying and expressing your appreciation of the GA community's concerns and problems. I suspect your appreciation may not be mirrored by the people who actually make the decisions!!
IMO the phone lines are brilliant, they are generally answered very promptly by people who appear to genuinely want to help and 95% of the time they do. We need this service and it works. Somebody famous (I cannot remember who) said "If it ain't broke don't fix it". I thnk this is a perfect example.
Our Eurocontrol bills do not go down, so why should we accept a reduced service?

Hawker 750

Hawker 750

Our staff numbers have gone down from 80+ in the formative years to less than 50 now (including part time) and looks like it will continue to drop.

Our budget is reducing year on year.

It is broke. We can't continue to answer 1300 calls a day AND fulfil our flow management responsibilities. For example, many airlines follow up every REA message with a phone call. We receive 350-400 REA messages per hour so we need a way to filter and process these differing requirements

I am very pleased you have received good service from Eurocontrol so far, looking at some of the other posts that is not a view shared by everyone.

The trick will be balancing all the differing requirements of the aircraft operators (loco, charter, schedule, flag carriers, bizjet, military) the air navigation service providers (en-route, aerodrome, oceanic and military) whilst managing whatever industrial action or weather event is ruining your day at any given time.

Something has to change.

Flowman
Quote: "Our budget is reducing year on year."
One has to ask the question...why? I do not think Eurocontrol's income is going down, the fees have not gone down and traffic levels are up so where is the money going? I believe member states get a divvy up of any excess Eurocontrol fees over expenditure.Would you confirm that this is the case, if so then any reduced budgets mean extra money for the member states.
I find the Eurocontrol charging scheme opaque to say the least. I once enquired why the UK's route charges were so much higher than any other country. The answer was because the UK gets most traffic! It is a bit like British Airways saying our fares are 25% more than Lufthansa because we are so busy! More likely the UK wants bigger divvy up.
Where can one download the audited accounts of Eurocontrol?

You are asking the wrong bloke. I am a former air traffic controller, I am not an accountant. Have a look here:

EUROCONTROL - Budget

As for route charges my understanding is that they are set to cover costs, they are not allowed to generate a profit. They are cheaper where facilities are more basic. This has the effect of pushing the traffic towards areas less well equipped to deal with it. Don't start me on that!

The divvy up of fees is not as you describe. I think we take 1% of route charges and distribute the rest to member states according to their rates. Things like SESAR are the subject of other contributions from member states. There are others better qualified to answer this :O

Hawker 750, having PM'd flowman, and already received a positive response from him, may I suggest you do the same. Its rare indeed to get direct access to the decision maker, so grab the chance while the offer is on the table.

Operations/ flight department of one
 

Flowman, thanks for the information and the heads up.

I will reinforce the opinions of other posters by saying that my operations/ flight department consists of only little old me, and when I am down route and away from my home computer/ office the only way that I can provide my boss with the service that he is paying handsomely for is to call the ever so helpful help desk.

Please don't make my life any harder by taking away the man that can help me in an instant. Perhaps he can't make the problem go away every time but at least if he can't fix it he can tell me why and i don't look stupid in front of the boss who wants an answer.

Fanjet. Understood

That sounds good.

Just so that you don't think I have disappeared off the radar or that I am not addressing the issues raised here I am pleased to inform you that His Dudeness and Clive Watson have agreed to assist.

I will discuss some ideas with them and use them as a reality check when creating any process, procedure or spec for new software/hardware.
I will post here when I have something meaningful to say. PMs from other contributors are always welcome.

Don't forget to look at the E-Helpdesk training package (link on the first post). I know it is not useful to bizjet users in its present state but if we start to discuss an m-Helpdesk you will at least have a point of reference.

flowman

Many Thx Flowman for your commitment :ok:

2/3 of our slot issues are solved with a plain phone call. When you can't, it's easier to report to the boss with a human being explanation instead of an hypothetic software one.

So we'd truly appreciate to maintain this contact with you.

Cheerio.

Flowman
 

I fly a turboprop GA aircraft around UK and Europe IFR. Every flight usually takes multiple attempts to get a acc for the route or a call to help desk.
Why not accept our Plan first time and TELL us the route You require between our dep and dest with the acc ,easy, as most times we get airborne the route flown is different to the acc.
With modern GPS based nav last minute route changes are no problem.
Perhaps too radical a proposal!!

cessnapete.

The Help desk does not handle any FPL related queries. Any issues related to flight planning are handled by FP1 here in Brussels (003227451950) or FP2 in Paris (0033169883820) dependent on area of departure.

If you need to know which to call for which area of departure you can find the areas of responsibility here:

http://myorbite.eurocontrol.int/http...CFMU_Staff.pdf

Section 2.1 (pg. 29/555)

In answer to your second question, some FPLs are corrected to the required routeing. Normally this is done if the filer submits "IFPS re-route accepted" in field 18 of the FPL. This, however was a procedure designed for the Kosovo crisis and there is no obligation for the FP operator to correct your route.

Often there are routeing restrictions applied by ACCs meaning that we cannot accept your original route even though you may well end up flying it (danger areas, airway closures, military activity etc, etc).

Have you used IFPUV? It WILL let you put in ADEP- DCT- ADES and then it will supply you with the correct route to file. That will also save an FP operator having to correct your FPL. Too radical? ;)

I use IFPUV every time I do a planning.

However, I didn´t know:

and even after trying hard for the last 30 minutes I can´t get it to work the way you describe it...

What I can say though, is that the route catalog provided very often does not help for flights from regional to regional airfields. I often wondered why accepted and acknowledge fpls are not added to the route catalog ?

You need to be in the protected NOP, the one you access with a token.
Go to the IFPUV portlet
Make sure you use the "Propose Routes" tab.
Enter route as described:
(FPL-ARCID-IN
-B737/M-sryw/c
-EGLL1000
-N0450F230 DCT
-EDDF0115 EDDK
-RMK/……. )


(you may have to play with the FL)

Thanks flowman, now even I understand how it works...

However... I tried one that made me a tad mad whilst planning the other day:

LFMU - EBCI, upper levels (FL390)

IFPUV answer is: DCT. (7 errors) Not very helpful, is it? Does this use the route catalogue?

Thats the route I came up with usinfg our fpl system:

DCT MEN UN871 ETREK UM976 BRY UM733 KOPOR UN874 VEKIN UZ173 ARVOL

Pretty much zig zag. 560nm vs. 431 overhead - overhead. How good we pay for emmissions to save the planet....apparently no one in France flies South-North, just the other way round.

(sorry for the sarcasm, but....)

Yes, the IFPUV does use the route catalogue. Accepted and acknowledged FPLs ARE added to the route catalogue, routes flown as plotted in ETFMS (the flow management system) are also added.

We just tried the same route in IFPUV, FL390 gave 642nm vs 431 direct
FL 350 gave 583nm vs 431.

One of our FPL supervisors could only manage 559nm using his system plotting the route piece by piece, so IFPUV performed quite well. The zig-zag is all to do with the necessity to avoid military airspace in Fr@nce, there is a large military area just North of your dep aerodrome and another one in Reims ACC area just West of your destination. So not a shortcoming of the FPL system!

Do you complain that you cannot drive straight over roundabouts? Don't shoot the messenger!

Anyway, the best route between the two aerodromes mentioned that gives you climb to 350 (not 390) as fast as possible is North through Bordeaux, it is 583nm but probably more economical (only you will know that):

AFRIC G39 GAI UT186 PERIG UY156 ADABI UN858 VADOM UN874 BAMES UT191 PODEM UN873 VEKIN UZ173 ARVOL at FL350.

Play around with the FL, it makes a difference.

To all other posters, this service will not be repeated so don't start posting routes all over Europe! :p

Time for some light relief!

Just so that you can see that the French Military are not wasting their time in those huge blocks of airspace that get in your way, here is some REALLY cool flying by them:

YouTube - Maroc Mirage 2003

Best watched at full volume (Musique : Silmarils - On n'est pas comme ca)

Seems they have to do lots of zig-zagging too.

:cool:

cool vid!

The flight LFMU-EBCI has just been cnl. All this effort wasted...

Thanks flowman!

Try this one:
EDTG - EBAW in a jet so may be F/L 220 +
Nightmare, trying CFMU to sort it does not work

At FL180, you could use OBORN/N0440 F180 IFR V17 GTQ N852 LNO LNO1A

lots of French Airforce airspace there above the Alsace...

An interesting discussion and thank you, Flowman, for participating in the dialogue.

My point is not germane to this discussion, but while last minute route changes are "no problem" to Cessnapete, please don't think that this is the case for all of us.

A last-minute nav change in my {single-pilot} operation is most certainly a big deal, as our modern GPS nav gear needs each waypoint to be added manually. I can't just specify an airway, start point and end point and have the nav kit fill out the rest as per a shiny FMS. I need to get out a chart and add each waypoint as required, taking time. If a segment is START UW123 ENDSS then it may not be as simple as adding the two waypoints only, as there may be several turning points on that airway between START and ENDSS.

Secondly our aircraft is often weight-limited and so a reroute can change our fuel plan beyond what we can accommodate -- extra track miles & different winds along a changed route can increase our Trip/Contigency fuel beyond what the original fuel plan had available in the Extra box.

This is all highly off-topic since you have nothing to do with routing but as an old mentor of mine used to tell me, "every misunderstanding starts somewhere." Re-routes are not necessarily as convenient easy for all of us. We omit the IFPS REROUTE ACCEPTED remark deliberately, for this reason, and would hope that opt-out is retained.

Anyone having problems with FPL acceptance based on routings should be following the sage advice offered and begin validating your FPLs via the IFPUV first. I know guys who don't even know what the RADs/Standard Route Documents are, let alone consult them before flight. Even my Chief Pilot still thinks you can pull out a chart and connect the dots from where you are to where you want to be in whatever way you wish. Sadly not so these days, try explaining that to him with his 40 years experience... ;)

Anyway, very off-topic. Sorry for that, just wanted to prevent another unhelpful piece of 'percieved wisdom' entering the cosmos.

route planner
 

Maybe a dumb question but why doesnt Eurocontrol have a route planning tool where we can enter a time, departure and destiantion incl FL, and it will give a recomended route.

I know this sounds easyer than it actually is but, if you think how many manhours are waisted (both on our side as on the CFMU/eurocontroll side) this is something that should deffinatelty be considdered. I mean if a computer can tell me in 30 seconds that a route is not accepted than it should also have the info give me a good route.

PD

Yes and no. To my knowledge there is the just the route catalogue - which you can acces with a CFMU access or via some fpl programs (Aviationoffice -which I use - for example) This catalogue does not have all the city pairs, so I use it as a crutch sometimes, planning, e.g. from LKPR to EDDF and then alter the bit from OKG to the real destination EDFM...

So we have been running with 1 helpdesk phone for a while now. Any adverse comments? There have been several busy days so similar loading to summer traffic levels. Would be interested in your comments. Good ones on here, bad ones PM me :O

pilot dude asks and I agree.
I asked this question twice before and got a politically correct answer: "data quality control", in other words jobs!
I understand everything needs time despite you (flowman) saying the staff numbers are being reduced. Another big cost is individual salaries, but I should not address it because of obvious reasons. There is a certain CFMU appeal, well, at least there was if it isn't the case nowadays.
Eurocontrol has improved (loads), but the tool I am referring to, flight planning, would be something that would definitely reduce dramatically solicitations to the Brussels or Paris guys.
The Central Flow Control Unit voice should always remain there and available because many times all I hear from the office guys is that "there is no REA in the system" despite my asking locally. The local ATC did not promptly make the request through to the Central Flow or then let's blame the system" as usual.
This is a constant evolving process. Thank you Flowman for coming forward and answering everything you possibly can.

Fractional

I refer you to the answers given on this thread in posts #18, 19, 20 and 21.

IFPUV supplies exactly what you refer to.

Incidentally, I am told that the NOP is now accessible from an i-Pad so you should be able to do all of that from the flight deck if you so desire.

Don't know where you got the "data quality control" answer. We have a dedicated section in the ops room (ADS) who are there for exactly that purpose, to maintain the database of airspace and to keep on top of the interminable changes to airspace, airways and other routes including real time opening and closing of same.

As for salaries and jobs I can only repeat that staff numbers have been drastically reduced, but not in ops. The overall cost of Eurocontrol has been reduced in line with the budgetary demands enforced by our stakeholders who will, I would imagine, continue to apply downward pressure.

The salary was a factor in my shifting my wife and kids 1200kms to a new life. Had the salary been lower I would not have come here. We all make choices....

But IFPUV does not have every possible A/P pairing in the database. Why don´t you (IFPUV) not collect fpls that are okay to add them to the database.

One thing that drives me mad is the sheer amount of changes (RAD etc). Every 14 days someone reinvents the wheel...at least thats my impression.

And you did the right one, me thinks.

Why so often ready messages don´t work, but a call to you does is one of the mysteries of Eurocontrol... that should be solved.

Why do REA messages not work but a call will make a difference?

Mimimum improvement by the ETFMS is 15 minutes, any less and it will not send a new slot. Humans can improve by the smaller amount. Equally, the machine will not disturb the pre-allocated sequence, humans will. This can create bunching of the traffic when delivered to the sectors. For example our count periods are one hour chunks every 20'. If the traffic all arrives at H+20', H+40' or on the hour the counts will look perfectly normal but the controller will definitely not be happy when he/she receives 20' worth of traffic in the same minute. So we do this with caution.

We receive up to 400 REA messages per hour so we do not encourage the practice of following up every REA with a phonecall, it just stops us doing flow management.

IFPUV does not work on city pairs. I asked one of our FPL operators to make a route between two obscure aerodromes and it worked, first time. Definitely no city pair. It tries to compile RAD compliant routes between specified points (aerodromes). As mentioned before, you may have to play around with the levels.

Dear flowman

As a bizjet driver with no access to the E-Helpdesk, I am still using the CFMU telephone occasionally.

Despite all mentioned drawbacks of todays world, I would like to thank you and your colleagues for your day to day assistance. It is of great value to our operation and we really appreciate having your support!
:D

CFMU Task
 

I would like to get it back to the topic: Flowman, isn´t the task of the CFMU to make the maximum possible use of the european sky?

Then just do it, g i v e us the routes that work for your computers and nothing else.

In some near future Ops will tell you where we want to go and y o u will tell us how to get there, simply because it´s your job.

Until then I can live with one telephone help line and an average waiting time of 3 minutes.

Yes, it is one of our jobs to maximise use of available capacity.

You say: "Ops will tell you where we want to go and y o u will tell us how to get there"

Most "airlines" would tell us to get lost if we did that. There are a thousand factors in choosing the optimum route for a flight, I don't need to tell you what they are, but we are not the ones best placed to decide that.

Your frustration seems to be in finding ANY route at all. Having looked at the RAD and all the constraints within it I understand your frustration. I go back to the comments made earlier in posts #18, 19, 20 and 21 regarding the IFPUV system.

I will be back at work tomorrow. PM me an example city pair (one where you had difficulty finding a route) and I will check once again if IFPUV can find one.

As I said before, I will not do this for every pilot who is having a bad day, but if it works then perhaps we will have identified a training requirement. If that is the case then we will deal with that. I await your PM.

flowman

Dear Flowman, when you write (post #35) to play with the levels, you are perfectly correct, but we can imagine that flow management in Eurocontrol has more efficient tools to suggest the best routes than pilots or some ops offices.
For instance, one colleague filed this route from LSMP to LFMP (kind of "obscure city pairs") F080 FRI G5 WIL/N0352F180 W110 LUMEL T10 TORPA V40 LUL G4 RLP G21 MOU A27 MEN J27 KELAM
The crew asked for a shorter and upper route, which was an understandable request (great circle 300nm, route 540nm, all way Low level).
Colleague called to central flow, and someone told that it was the best route available ! and promised to call back if he found a more suitable routing.
Roughly one hour after, he indeed called, to say that nothing was found.
But in the meantime, i refiled this flight plan with the following routing :
F120 DCT SPR Z65 MILPA DCT 4608N00553E DCT GIRKU/N0398F240 UN852 DIVKO/N0357F180 G7 BGR A27 KANIG which was almost 100nm shorter, and most of the route was in UPPER level !

I must admit that it was very hard to find, but it is quite difficult to understand that central flow could not find this route, or maybe even another cheaper / cost effective one that i still could not find.
If you enter the first route in IFPUV, of course it will say that there is no better route since it just finds routes at the same level. But humans from central flow could play with the levels as well !

Thank you for participating in Pprune and giving us the opportunity to explain some of our concerns to involved/concerned people at Eurocontrol !

Best regards

FL480

Sorry for the delay in replying, I've been out of circulation for a while.

I agree that humans at CFMU could play around with the levels but my objective was to try to inform you poor people how to find your way around the maze that is the European route network.

I have discussed the routes you mentioned with one of the FP supervisors and he concedes that this is a particularly tricky area in which to find routes, especially at the levels and with the city pairs you mentioned.

Our flight Planning system (including IFPUV) has parameters within it that limit the number of routes it will propose to "sensible" options. As you can imagine, if it proposed or examined every possibility, there would be millions for each city pair.

What you succeeded in doing was finding an option that our system was prevented from finding by its own parameters.

Our human operators, who have experience in searching for such routes can, as you suggest, help you to find routes. They are perfectly willing to do so, if you get stuck, give them a call. They will help.

I'm still trying to work out how this thread drifted from E-Helpdesk and telephones to IFPUV and route finding :confused:

Anything to help though

flowman