HANDLING REJECTED AND SUSPENDED FLIGHT PLANS

Once filed, a flight plan can either be acknowledged (accepted), rejected or suspended. Acknowledgements or rejections usually happen almost immediately if the flight plan has been assessed automatically or within a short time period if it has to be assessed manually. Suspensions can occur at any point up to the flight's departure time. These situations can normally be handled easily and quickly without needing to involve your technical support team.

Rejections

When a flight plan is rejected, a message is included explaining the reason why. The most likely cause of a rejection is that another flight plan already exists for the aircraft which overlaps with the times of your flight plan. This can occur if a syndicate of pilots share an aircraft, or if someone else has already filed the same flight plan within your organisation. Other potential causes of rejection (such as an invalid route) will normally have been identified and corrected by the software before you were able to file the plan.

A rejected flight plan must be amended and then refiled in the normal way. The easiest way to do this is to reuse the original flight plan.

  1. Click the rejected flight plan in the All Flights screen. The flight will be shown as a Historic flight in the summary screen.
    If necessary, click the Historic filter option at the top of the screen to view the flight plan.
  2. In the left panel, click Reuse.
  3. Make the required changes as highlighted in the rejection message, and then file the flight plan as before.

Suspensions

A flight plan can be suspended after filing for a number of possible reasons, such as if the route becomes invalid due to a region of air space becoming restricted. Again, a message will be sent explaining the reason. You can view this message by clicking Suspended in the All Flights screen, which displays a message box similar to that shown below. Often, an alternative route will be suggested (as shown in the yellow box).

  1. Double-click the suspended flight in the All Flights screen to open it in the software.
  2. In the left panel, click VIEW DETAILS alongside the message "This flight plan is suspended".
  3. Copy the route string for the suggested alternative route (NEWRTE) if one is provided.
  4. Paste the route string into the box in the flight planning menu over the original route.
  5. Click Update Map.
  6. Review the new route on the map to make sure it is acceptable, and make any changes necessary.
  7. Click Update and then confirm that you want to update the flight plan by clicking Update in the dialog box.
    The software will make the required changes to the flight plan and send the appropriate Change message to the air traffic control authority.

Further information on suspended flights can be found in this online article.