NATS Successfully Pioneers Internet-based Flight Planning Service

KARLSRUHE/GERMANY, March 2009 The AFPEx application is an integral part of the Extended Aeronautical Message Handling System (EAMS) which was supplied to NATS in early 2008 by COMSOFT GmbH from Germany. EAMS is based on COMSOFT's proven Aeronautical Data Access System CADAS. Site acceptance trials were completed successfully at the beginning of March 2008.

Using AFPEx, users can now send or receive flight plans and other related aeronautical messages directly onto the Aeronautical Fixed Telecommunications Network (AFTN) via the Internet from anywhere, anytime, including acknowledgements and departure slots for IFR flights. More than 2000 users have signed up so far benefiting from the high comfort and user friendliness of the data representation on the terminals. All user entries are syntactically and semantically cross-checked with static data with regard to plausibility and consistency. Users can store frequently used routes and retrieve them from the system's database. Additionally, the AFTN addressing aspect has been simplified and these are just some of the convenient functions which have been highly welcomed by their users and which help to tremendously increase the quality of entered data, thus superseding the tedious and costly visual checking and retyping of flight plans.

At the ATC Global in Amsterdam NATS' Director Supply Chain and Facilities Management, Chris Odam signalled high satisfaction with COMSOFT's contribution to NATS infrastructure: "The big success of the EAMS project is another milestone in NATS' strategy to apply latest information technologies to increase reliability and safety, whilst at the same time lowering the operational costs".

In fact, safety and security has been one of the major aims of the EAMS project: A replica system has been installed at a remote contingency site in order to guarantee utmost service continuity in case of catastrophic events. In addition to the inherent safety features, the architecture of EAMS comprises the latest Internet security technology available on the market.

The CADAS product family includes COMSOFT's advanced aeronautical terminal and database solutions such as AMHS and ATS User Terminals and integrated Aeronautical Information Management (iAIM) compliant to AIXM 5.