NAVBLUE's N-Flight Planning boosts accuracy and efficiency with EUROCONTROL

Toulouse, France,13 December 2022 - With the support of the EUROCONTROL Network Manager, NAVBLUE's N-Flight Planning (N-FP) has integrated new EUROCONTROL B2B services, providing a step-change in optimizing European routes for efficiency and compliance while also decreasing dispatcher workload using automation.      

Whereas previous versions of N-FP used EUROCONTROL services to query routes and for flight plan validation, they weren't fully integrated into the workflow and optimisation process. Through discussions and collaboration with EUROCONTROL, NAVBLUE has integrated a suite of new services which enhance user's situational awareness, simplify flight planning by leveraging automation, and reduce costs and CO2 emissions through optimal routing.

The new functionalities contribute to NAVBLUE's vision of true manage-by-exception workflow:

• The initial planning & filing can be fully automated, using NAVBLUE's optimization engine to work in the background to search for the most optimized, compliant route available;
• When disruptions occur in the network and the dispatcher needs to find alternative solutions, the new functionalities facilitate the re-routing work by displaying the regulations and searching for new routes that avoid problem areas to minimize delays, allowing the user to submit a new plan to EUROCONTROL only if the delay is acceptable.

Richard Shehab, Head of Portfolio Business Growth at NAVBLUE, said: "N-Flight Planning is constantly evolving to suit the unique needs of the rapidly changing aviation industry. The density and complexity of the European airspace required a shift towards a collaborative approach to building and optimizing routes within constrained airspace. Combining NAVBLUE resources and expertise with EUROCONTROL ensures our product continues to be an industry leader, which directly benefits our customers."

Iacopo Prissinotti, Director Network Management at EUROCONTROL commented:

As the European Network Manager, our goal is to make aviation operations as efficient and sustainable as possible. We have set ourselves the target to provide business solutions for aviation that leverage the latest technology and reflect our close collaboration with all operational stakeholders.

The new functionalities are available immediately to the N-FP community. Airlines can reach out to NAVBLUE’s 24-hour Support Department to learn more and how to use the new changes.

Note to editors:

When flying in European airspace, Airspace Users must submit a flight plan to the EUROCONTROL Network Manager’s operations center (NMOC), which validates, corrects if necessary and distributes them to the Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) and other operational partners concerned.

With up to 100,000 flight plan messages processed each day by the Network Manager’s flight planning system, it is essential that the flight plans submitted by computerized flight planning service providers such as NAVBLUE have a high level of compliance with routing constraints published by ATC.

To aid compliance, EUROCONTROL provides a pre-filing validation tool to enable users to check their flight plan before filing, as well as a dynamic route generation tool, which can provide route options that are certain to be compliant. These tools are being made available through state-of-the-art web services leveraging B2B data exchange. In addition, the EUROCONTROL re-routing opportunity tools provide potentially improved routings to Airspace Users after they have filed their flight plan to enable them to take advantage of more optimal routes as airspace becomes available.

As part of the continuous development to improve services to customers, EUROCONTROL is in the process of digitally transforming its operational systems and implementing new digital operational concepts and technologies - a development that will benefit all aviation stakeholders using the Network in Europe.