Overview
The Pre-Flight Check (PFC) initiative, launched by the Maastricht Upper Area Control Centre (MUAC) in 2020, aims to enhance flight efficiency during the pre-flight phase. The PFC’s goal is to optimise flight plan routes before departure, by filing a flight plan trajectory closer to the expected actual flight path, improving operational efficiency and environmental sustainability.
The PFC compares the flight plan submitted by an aircraft operator for a specific flight with a database of available routes for that city-pair. If a more efficient (often shorter) route proposal is available, a MUAC operator will perform additional checks and, if deemed operationally suitable, approve the proposal from the PFC for further processing.
For communication to the aircraft operator, the Pre-Flight Check utilises the MUAC ATM Portal (ATM-P), a specialised B2B web-based platform in place in MUAC since 2017 that connects MUAC with aircraft operators and other ATM actors. ATM-P enables MUAC to collaborate, share data and information, and act on flight improvements and various cost-saving and environmental opportunities. More than 200 aircraft operators can receive re-routing proposals from MUAC. The re-routing proposals are made available to the aircraft operators via emails generated by the ATM-P upon approval by the MUAC operator, as explained above.
MUAC ATM Portal – Illustration from EUROCONTROL publication
Building on the PFC, a more advanced concept of “ECO trajectories” has been assessed in 2023. This concept addresses all greenhouse gas emissions (not only CO2) using additional environmental data estimated by the Advanced Emissions Model (AEM), developed and maintained by members of the EUROCONTROL’s Aviation Sustainability Unit working at the EUROCONTROL Innovation Hub (EIH).
Using advanced algorithms, AEM processes flight trajectories on a flight-by-flight basis to estimate fuel burn and related exhaust emissions. This process identifies routes with a smaller environmental impact, for potential re-routing proposals to the aircraft operators. The use of AEM for this purpose is the result of a collaborative effort.
MUAC ATM Portal – Graphical re-routing support (simulated case)
Over a few years, the PFC and the concept of “ECO trajectories” have led to the generation of more than 10.000 pre-flight re-routing proposals, assessed as providing optimised profiles. At the time of finalising this report, the acceptance rate by the airlines was between 25% and 30%.