Flight Planning through Free Route Airspace

[Ethan Fortier]

Hey, I'm at a loss when it comes to free route airspace flight planning in Europe.

 

I get, in theory, that it's all about the fact that you can plan a direct entry and exit point through an FIR's controlled airspace, and that you can set up whatever intermediate waypoints to avoid whatever airspace you want to/have to avoid (such as restricted or prohibited airspace). However, when I tried to go ahead and learn more about FRA flight planning, I came across this EuroControl Route Availability Docomeent, and I left with a lot more questions than I had.

 

How exactly is one supposed to use this docomeent in an effective manner for the purposes of flight planning? How is one supposed to translate the coded info in this docomeent into relevant restrictions for his/her flight? I've looked through that thing a thousand times and still can't make heads or tails of it.

[Lindsey Wiebe 1101951]

Ok those look worse than NATs!!!

 

Honestly, those docs are WAY more complicated than is necessary for Vatsim (they're real and need to be in leglaese).

 

But what it does look like is they have agreements to take FP between certain intersections. I wouldn't worry about these, IMO. Best way if you have FMC is to plan the Q routes (RNAV routes) using Skyvector or such websites.

[Magnus Meese]

I use it to look up IFPS validation error codes (I use PFPX for planning). Look up the error code, find the required routing and apply it, or just route around the problem area all together.

[Philipp Edlich]

My way to create a route:

 

1. open vRoute Flight planning section
   
2. Check for existing route or create a new route
   
3. Build a route with whatever direct you want in FRA
   
4. Click "Validate"
   
5. Wait for errors and look them up in RAD
   
6. Correct them
   
7. Repeat steps 4-6 until you get "OK"
   
8. Save the route and contribute to the community