Cross-border free route airspace operations to be extended towards Bratislava CTA

Cross border free route airspace night operations are due to be expanded from 6 December 2018 within the SEEN FRA, an airspace area comprising the control areas (CTAs) of Bucharest, Budapest and Sofia.

According to an Aeronautical Information Circular (AIC) published by Hungarocontrol: “The expanded SEEN FRA concept builds on the existing night FRA implementation in the airspaces of CTA and will represent a further step in optimizing flight operations in a large volume of airspace expanding towards Bratislava CTA and will provide operational, environmental and cost benefits. The application of expanded SEEN FRA Cross-border Concept will encompass the horizontal boundaries of Bratislava CTA, București CTA, Budapest CTA and Sofia CTA in their full extent.”

In the expanded SEEN FRA area, aircraft operators will continue to be able to flight plan user preferred trajectories and thereby will obtain benefits from planning and execution of flights. The expanded SEEN FRA area will also increase the compatibility between the flight plan and the trajectory flown, hence increasing the predictability for a given flight.

The SEEN FRA applicability is planned during the time period 2300-0500 (2200 - 0400) UTC.