Successful live trial improves Paris – Munich city pair

The French and German ANSPs and their military counterparts conducted successfully a joint live trial to improve the city-pair routes from Paris Charles de Gaulle to Munich Airport. The trial was held from 12 November 2015 until 3 February 2016. It continued the work of the first live trial that the bilateral initiative DFS – DSNA (BILINI) conducted in close cooperation with the French and the German air forces in 2013/2014.

The overall objective of the second trial had two pillars. First, the goal was to find airspace management (ASM) solutions to provide the shortest possible routing between Paris – Munich for commercial airspace users. Second, the aim was to improve the flexible access to the French military training area TSA 22A for military airspace users. The team reassessed and optimised cross-border coordination procedures between airspace management cells (AMC) and AMC flow management position (FMP) based on technical support from the FASO function (FABEC Airspace Status Overview). The booking status of the German and French military areas were managed using a rolling updated airspace use plan (UUP), which also involved the activation of airspace until three hours before the event. During the trial, the notification time for the UUP publication by the Network Manager (NM) was reduced from once an hour to every 30 minutes. The validation proved successful and the amendment of the European UUP process for the release of airspace is one of the main outcomes of the initiative.

The shortest route from Paris to Munich passes through military airspaces in France and Germany.

A major improvement was the temporary implementation of a direct route (DCT) crossing the TSA 22A area. The DCT was available as an alternative during CDR3 status of the existing route UM164. It enabled aircraft operators to plan the shortest possible routing in the flight plan and to exploit the full benefit of the coordination efforts.

The bilateral initiative DFS – DSNA is part of the FABEC ATFCM/ASM project. The results will support the further developments at FABEC level.

An animation shows all flight paths used during the trial. You can see the video here.