Free Route Airspace (FRA) holds great potential to enable the achievement of cost, environmental and efficiency goals. By reducing the load on air traffic controllers and allowing more direct flights. 

 According to EUROCONTROL1, the benefits that will be achieved upon full implementation of FRA within Europe are quite impressive. A reduction of 1 billion nautical miles flown, 6 billion tonnes of fuel utilised, 20 million tonnes of CO2 and €5 billion overall cost savings.

Taking a look back

The SEE FRA programme was implemented in November 2019 and expanded in January 2021, allowing aircraft operators to plan their flights freely across the airspace of Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia 24/7 without the limitations of geographical boundaries. In 2023, the Czech Republic joined the the programme, guaranteeing aircraft operators free airspace flights from the Black Sea to the German border, with further expansion of FRA operations to Poland and Scandinavia planned at the same time as Vienna, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest ACC cross border operations.

Looking back at the 2023 plan to implement cross-border operations between FRA-IT / SECSI FRA, we can see that implementation still faces challenges. Beginning in July of 2023 and running through August of 2024 the cross-border FRA between Italy and the FAB CE states was fully deployed from the ANSP perspective. We are constantly working on increasing the adoption of FRA by the airspace users and assissting to help with implementation. 

Some of the possible topics to address could include:

  • Aircraft Operator involvement: do they have the information needed to understand the available cross-border options and how to take advantage of them?
  • Was the Route Availability Document (RAD) updated and made available accordingly?
  • Were the Computerized Flight Plan Documents updated and made available accordingly?
  • Are there other unexpected impacts?

Part of the work that needs to be done moving ahead is to better understand what the cause of the challenges were and how to build a Concept of Operations (CONOPS) for implementation to ensure full use of the opportunities presented from FRA.

2024 achievements and goals

There are two main projects on the agenda for implementation of cross-border FRA during 2024 with a target for completion in the November timeframe to allow seamless FRA operations within South East Europe and Central Europe.

  1. SECSI FRA and SEE FRA (Vienna CTA and Praha CTA/Bratislava CTA/Budapest CTA)

The availability of FRA will be 24 hours daily and flight planning will be managed by a single point within the Vienna ACC Area of Responsibility (AoR). It will not be mandatory to use intermediate points along the FRA boundaries in Vienna, Praha, Bratislava and Budapest to initiate flight planning. The use of LAT/LONG within FRAIT and SEE FRA will be avoided, although it will be allowed within SECSI FRA for indicating changes in speed and or requested flight levels (RFL).

There are still two CONOPS (Concept of Operations) issues that need to be resolved during the implementation process:

  • Whether or not to include Prague AoR, Bratislava AoR and Budapest AoR points in SECSI ANSPs + ENAV systems
  • The agreement to support the single point mentioned above in the Vienna ACC AoR and the implications to the AoRs in the region. The one point per FIR would be applied the same way SVK and HUN are as a part of SEE FRA.
  1. BALTIC FRA and SEE FRA (FRACZECH)

The availability of FRA will be 24 hours daily. It will not be mandatory to use intermediate points along the FRA boundaries between BALTIC FRA and SEE FRA (FRACZECH). The use of LAT/LONG within SEE FRA and BALTIC FRA will be avoided.

There is still one  issue that needs to be addressed during implementation in order to support one point per FIR within SEE FRA and BALTIC FRA, as this will be mandatory.

Eurocontrol FRA Workshop in October

Challenges remain as to how implementation is aligned across the different regions. The Network Manager is hosting an Operational FRA Workshop on the 29th/30th October to continue to align key topics such as:

  • FRA design and implementation:

    • FRA Significant Points: FRA Arrival / Departure points, FRA Significant points at FRA boundary
    • FRA Connecting Routes
    • “One point per FIR” rule
    • Lessons learned by ANS CR to date

  • FRA in the RAD considering new approaches towards FRA segment data management outside of the RAD
  • Airspace design guidelines and ANSP experiences related to military areas.

Žiga Ogrizek, Slovenia Control, Air Space Taskforce Chairman stated, “Free Route Airspace continues to be a priority for Europe as the need to address the environmental impact of aviation continues to grow within our industry and in the flying public’s view of travel. We need to continue to prioritise this effort and then educate these stakeholders on the benefits observed through the implementation.”

If you are interested in joining the October workshop, the full agenda and registration link can be found here.