A great document from unexpected quarters
Before anyone misunderstands, I would like to stress that receiving a great document from the Air Traffic Management and Performance Panel (ATMRPP) is not what is unexpected. It is more the scope of the document that was surprising, given its relatively humble beginnings. That the document is also visionary and uses the correct terminology throughout is just icing on the cake.
So what is this doc that has moved this arch-critic of the more common, poorly structured, inconsistent products using poor terminology to such words of praise?
When I was sent a copy of “Flight and Flow Information for a Collaborative Environment – A Concept”, produced by the ATMRPP, my interest was picked immediately. A few years ago when this document was in its infancy, I had the honor of being able to advise EUROCONTROL on how to interpret the advanced flight planning vision we wrote into the SESAR Concept of Operations. I recalled clearly how different experts had different views on the subject and it looked like achieving consensus would be all but impossible. So, if for nothing else, I was curious to see what the result was in the end.
Why did I say that the document, in spite of its lofty title, had humble beginnings? Well, the work that culminated in this beauty had set out originally to create a new ICAO flight plan to replace the current, hopelessly outdated product. In the end, a two step approach was agreed with a new, updated flight plan coming in the near future (read more about that here) to take care of the immediate needs. After this first step, the second aims to implement what they called the FF-ICE, covering the time frame up to 2025. FF-ICE stands for Flight and Flow Information for a Collaborative Environment and the document is in fact the description of the FF-ICE concept.
Setting out to remedy the pretty bad scene around the existing flight plan and its contents, the experts could not fail to realize that a solution that addressed only the flight plan as such would not bring about the much needed improvement. Only a wholesale revamping of the information management environment of which flight plans and their content are a part would ensure that the well-known problems disappear and the whole thing become future proof.
The ATMPRPP created a concept that aligns well with System Wide Information Management (SWIM) as being planned in Europe and the US and it also covers the new ideas on how flight planning should work as described in the SESAR Concept of Operations.
An additional beauty of this document is its terminology use. I will not list the authors of the multitude of documents still coming out of various organizations that seem to ignore advances made in conceptual thinking and technical solutions and which are still unable to grasp the difference between down-linking and publishing of information (a crucial difference), I will only say that the FF-ICE concept description does not contain such crucial errors and the terminology used is on the dot throughout.
SWIM is mentioned in the documents wherever this is appropriate and quite clearly, the authors have used the latest thinking about SWIM and correctly described all relevant aspects (technical, operational and institutional) of that particular concept.
The document meets head-on such sensitive issues as trajectory based operations versus volume-of-airspace operations and correctly describes how those two, radically different, methods of operation will most likely evolve. I have seen many a document that preferred to sidestep those sensitive issues rather than risk being shot down before seeing the light of day…
The FF-ICE concept description is so completely consistent, correct and well written that the whole idea of sensitive issues is given another meaning. They become just another element in the concept with a proper solution, period.
The FF-ICE concept is neither a SESAR nor a NextGen document. It comes from an ICAO panel and it traces its legitimacy to various ICAO documents, among them the Global ATM Operational Concept (Doc 9854) and the Manual on ATM System Requirements (Doc 9882). It is also a concept with world-wide applicability and we know how notoriously difficult it is to create such things without falling back on the lowest common denominator to make things acceptable.
The FF-ICE concept document is a shining example of how the pitfalls of the past can be avoided and how a concept of world-wide applicability can be developed that will pull rather than being pushed. In many ways the FF-ICE concept can serve also as a blue-print for some parts of SESAR and even NextGen. Finally in terms of clarity, terminology use and logical structure it is almost without equal.
Well done ATMRPP!
So what will happen next? The FF-ICE concept has been the subject of very extensive review (all Panels and Groups in ICAO) and has also been presented several times to the ANC. A meeting this month will put the finishing touches to it and then it will be ready for the next big challenge: how to translate this concept into reality.
Clearly the concept is too high level to immediately translate into SARPS (e.g. Doc 4444 + Annexes) but if the work done so far is any indication, the drive behind FF-ICE will see it through with flying colors.
Download your copy here but please note that this is still (formally) a working document, though a very mature one. We will bring you the final, approved version as soon as it will be available.
You can get the final version here.
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