Are you aware of ICAO Flight Plan changes?

Effectivity: Global and Challenger series aircraft equipped with Collins avionics suite 

ATA: 23 and 34 

By: Lahcene Bensalem - Technical Services  

Bombardier would like to inform Global and Challenger series aircraft customers who are approved participants in the U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC (controller pilot data link communication) trial that they are requested to start filing code FANSER in field 18 of their ICAO Flight Plan (FPL).   

Bombardier has updated the ICAO FPL documents posted on the Customer Portal to reflect this recommendation from the FAA, in consultation with our avionics OEM, Collins Aerospace. 

Collins Aerospace notified Bombardier of a recent field report from an operator flying a different manufacturer’s aircraft. A full route clearance (i.e. UM80) was sent to the aircraft and loaded into the flight management system (FMS) using the push-to-load feature, but the resulting load did not match the clearance. The crew identified the issue and manually fixed the problem during review of the modified flight plan. The clearance was accepted, and the flight continued without incident.  

Collins Aerospace has confirmed that Global and Challenger aircraft equipped with the Collins FMS are also affected by this condition. 

Following discussions between the FAA, NATCA, L3Harris, and Collins Aerospace, it was determined that aircraft exhibiting this condition are to use filing code FANSER (note: "E" indicates En Route and “R” stands for restricted, or loading issues as identified in FAA AC90-117). L3Harris has already updated the “U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC Avionics Trial” list accordingly.  

Refer to the following link for details: U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC Avionics Trial v2.10 dated August 18, 2022. 

As a reminder, aircraft are only authorized to file for use of U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC services after their registration form has been accepted by L3Harris and the required avionics version has been validated through the U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC Trial document. 

The use of the FANSER filing code still enables aircraft to utilize the U.S. Domestic En Route CPDLC DataComm services, but it removes the STAR procedure from the loadable portion of the uplink clearance message. This will prevent the FMS from incorrectly loading the procedure legs. 

Upon receiving route clearance, flight crews are to load uplinked CPDLC clearance using FMS push-to-load, and then manually re-load the required STAR into the FMS flight plan. 

The flight crew should be familiar with airplane flight manual (AFM) limitations, which requires validating the entire inserted content of the flight plan modification received via CPDLC before execution. 

Operators should be familiar with the most recent information contained in the ICAO FPL available on the Bombardier Customer Portal.  

In addition, Bombardier will be publishing Flight Operation Notification (FON) reference AVNC-042 for Global aircraft and AVNC-006 for Challenger aircraft to notify flight crews about this condition and work-around procedure.