Operational Flight Planning
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Operational Flight Planning is a sub domain of the Flight Ops domain. An operational flight plan is required to ensure an airplane meets all of the operational regulations for a specific flight, to give the flight crew information to help them conduct the flight safely, and to coordinate with air traffic control (ATC). A flight plan includes the route the crew will fly and specifies altitudes and speeds. It also provides calculations for how much fuel the airplane will use and the additional fuel it will need to carry to meet various requirements for safety. Minimum information on an operational flight plan 1) What speed to fly (possibly varying along the route) 2) How much fuel the airplane will burn ("trip fuel") 3) Total departure fuel, and how it is allocated — fuel to alternate, contingency fuel, and other allocations that vary between airlines and regulatory rules 4) What route (ground track) to fly 5) What profile (altitudes along the route) to fly By varying the route (i.e., ground track), altitudes, speeds, and amount of departure fuel, an effective flight plan can reduce fuel costs, time-based costs, overflight costs (to obtain the right to fly over a country’s airspace), and lost revenue from payload that can't be carried. These variations are subject to airplane performance, weather, allowed route and altitude structure, schedule constraints, and operational constraints. In summary, the following tasks are within the scope of this sub domain. It is responsible for calculating operational flight plan (flight path) under consideration of slots, info by ATC, Over-flight rights, Weather, Costs, Flight time. Furthermore it announces operational Flight Plan to ATC and computes payload and minimum fuel. It also provides flight and navigation information to pilots. Lastly, it prepares and provides briefing documents to crew.