European Flight Level Adherence Days

[just_for_laffs]

It seems that crews are generally not impressed by refusals by ATC , particularly in Spain, to requests for clearances that deviate from the FPL.

I wonder how the forthcoming Eurocontrol Flight Level Adherence Days - 29/30 September - when such practice is supposed to be applied in large parts of European airspace will be received?

There has been a year-long awareness campaign. How effective has it been, do you know about the trial days?

As an ex-controller, it goes against the grain not to offer a more efficient clearance if it's possible, but on the other hand I can see what the trial/idea is trying to achieve. What are your thoughts?

[Denti]

Awareness campaign? Certainly has reached us lowly excuses for human being sitting in the front end being overpaid and sipping coffee. Must have become stuck somewhere in the more enlightened ranks in the flight operations office.

Have read something about the adherence days, but i think it was on pprune, not in any company information.

[eagleflyer]

Flight level adherence day

Hi,

have you been briefed about this already and what do you think about it?

I guess they will find out that nothing really changes for the better. Of course I´m the typical ATCO being sceptical about things like this but having a slot window of 15 minutes will have much more influence than direct routings or other than filed flightlevels.

In my unit we have just received a little brochure so far and I doubt we will get more than this.

[thomasd]

personly I´m curious for the results altough I think in my case(who flies mostly to spain and portugal) this is not an issue becouse there is not so much traffic as in nortern europe ,was it not for the "secret strike" from spanish controllers.what I´m more curious about is what happened to the plans for dct in most countries or so called free routing, the only country which i know who adhered to this was portugal..

With this innovative concept (Portugal was the first state to move forward with this concept within the European airspace), NAV Portugal allows airlines to freely choose the point of entry and output in Lisbon FIR, according to their needs.

The fact that the airlines are not limited to pre-defined routes, allows them to choose, depending on prevailing winds, the more efficient route within our FIR, giving them a reduction in distance flown, flight time and fuel consumption, with consequent environmental benefits that this gives to us all.

As testimony to the benefits brought by this important change in the configuration of our air space over the past year, the IACA - International Air Carriers Association welcomed NAV Portugal as the very first Air Traffic Services Provider to design and implement, within European airspace, the first successful initiative of this kind, highlighting the significant savings in fuel and carbon emissions provided to their associated airlines, which are large users of Portugals airspace for both, incoming and outgoing flights to Portugal and over flights.

Fillip Lamoral, Flight Operations Director of IACA, stressed that we now see developments in increased airspace flexibility, Night Direct airways and the introduction of Free Route airspace elsewhere in Europe which can, in part, be attributable to the success of the Portuguese project. In terms of advances made in Air Traffic Flow Management and the first successful implementation of Free Route Airspace, NAV Portugal undoubtedly placed the first key building block and first puzzle piece of the planned Single European Sky. Congratulations from the IACA team, her Member Airlines and Associate Members and we truly hope to continue to deliver our support to NAV Portugal in order to build an efficient European Sky for all partners involved.

[411A]

Euroland enroute ATC has been in chaos for many years, and this new idea is quite unlikely to change this, very much.
If, at all.