Kingdom of Saudi Arabia at the Ready for FPL2012

JEDDAH/SAUDI ARABIA, May 2011 GACA, the ANSP of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is, way ahead of most other ANSPs, well prepared to await the worldwide migration of the flight plan format applicable in November 2012. Not only have GACA ordered an FPL2012-compabtible update of their CADAS flight plan terminal system, they will also equip their central AMHS/AFTN switching solution with the automated flight plan converter AIDA-FPL, provided by the German ATC specialist COMSOFT. In full accordance with the conversion rules defined by ICAO, AIDA-FPL converts flight plans received in the new format into the present format, if the new format is not supported by the recipient.

Moreover, GACA will also receive COMSOFTs highly sophisticated converter for the transformation from the present to the new FPL format. Combined, the twin solution solves the problem that even new flight planning systems often support only one of the two flight plan formats, while both formats need to be applied in parallel for a certain period of time. The COMSOFT converter considerably facilitates the ICAO-mandated transition, enabling ANSPs to significantly save investment costs, which would incur when replacing or upgrading their existing flight plan systems.

The introduction of the new flight plan format in November 2012 is not only the subject of a lively debate in various ICAO regions, but was also one of the key topics at the COMSOFT AMHS User Group (CAUG) meeting, which took place in May this year.