6.10.1.1. Submit ICAO flight plan via NAIPS

Use this option when planning to fly IFR, VFR in controlled airspace, or you wish to use a VFR Flight Following service. You can submit your flight plan and nominate a SARTIME in one go. There’s no need to submit a separate SARTIME notification if you’ve submitted a VFR flight plan via this method.

Each stage of a flight plan will have a separate page than can be checked and changed if required. Stages are accessed via the blue Stage button at the top of the screen

Flight Plan/Pilot details

This information, which includes the pilot’s NAIPS details must be entered to submit a plan. These are then saved for future use.

Rows requiring attention will be highlighted green.

Tapping the Estimated Time of Departure (ETD) row brings up the time picker popup. Tap the UTC button switch between UTC and LT (Local Time)

The current iOS time and date selector.

An older iOS time and date selector.

Manual changes to flight plan details

Most settings can be manually edited at this point if required. When a setting or value is changed on this page, the change propagates back to either your flight plan, or to your aircraft profile. For example: If you notice that your aircraft is missing a DME in the submission, you can tap the Nav/Comm row, select D (DME) then dismiss the pop-up. This change is now automatically saved in your aircraft profile for future submissions.

‘Other Details’

This section contains a number of items, some of which AvPlan will insert automatically if/when appropriate into the “Other Details” part of the flight plan submission. In general this may happen when equipment or capability have been specified in the aircraft definition or in pilot details, or when the flight crosses an FIR boundary

All can be manually edited prior to plan submission.

SARTIME

A SARTIME can be entered for departure/arrival at a particular point in a VFR flight plan.

SARTIMEs are in UTC, and entered using the date and time selection pop-up (this has canned as iOS has evolved versi). You can switch between UTC and device Local Time (LT) by tapping the button in the top-right corner of the pop-up.

*If AvPlan EFB has been granted access to your calendar (which is requested the first time you submit a SARTIME), a calendar entry will automatically be created so your device(s) will chime ten minutes prior to your nominated SARTIME.

Submitting a plan/NOSEND

The Submit button sends the plan to AirServices. If only a test plan submission is required, set NOSEND to ON before tapping Submit. When NOSEND is set to ON, a flight plan is sent to Airservices with the word NOSEND substituted for your callsign.

!Use NOSEND sparingly. Once a NOSEND plan sends successfully, there is little reason why an actual plan submission should not work; there is no need to send multiple NOSENDs.

It is not a valid action to change a recently-filed plan to a NOSEND plan and submit it. If you wish to make changes to a recently filed plan and perform NOSEND to test the changes, the plan must be Cleared for re-use first.

NAIPS response to plan submission

The NAIPS response to the plan submission appears in the window below the Send icon.

At the top of the screen, Not Filed will update to Filed OK when the submission works correctly. If an error message is received, the status File Failed will display. This will only be cleared by a successful submission.

Amending a submitted flight plan

Flight plans can be amended by making the necessary changes to your flight plan (e.g. departure time), then pressing the submit button once again.

NAIPS errors

Common error codes returned by the NAIPS system and their fixes can be found at our FAQ

Flight plan messages

When your flight plan has been accepted, you will receive a message on your device(s) that ATC have acknowledged your plan.

In addition, you will be advised of your expected routing. If ATC change your flight planned route, you will see this message and can be ready to confirm the new routing when you call for a clearance.

These messages will appear in Planning > Flight Status. Tap the Mark as read button to dismiss them.

If you do not wish to receive such messages, these can be turned off/on by tapping Settings > Notifications.

ICAO International Flight Plans submission

To generate a fully completed ICAO International Flight Plan, tap on the ICAO Form Button at the top of the screen. Tapping this button generates the form using details entered elsewhere in the Flight Planning sections. (The Form is not directly editable in this screen). The Share button can then be used to email the form (as a PDF file), save it, or AirDrop it to another device for subsequent transmission to the appropriate authority.

*NAIPS can handle international plans for flights between Australia, PNG and NZ

International FIR boundary crossing

International flight plans must conbtain an EET/ entry. AvPlan automates this. In most cases there will be a waypoint on a published route at an FIR boundary. This will be part of your plan, and will automatically populate the EET/ field when the plan submits (see ‘Other Details’ above). When no waypoint exists at the FIR boundary you should create a user waypoint on the boundary and include it in your plan. AvPlan will recognise that your waypoint is at the FIR boundary crossing point and will complete the EET/ entry when submitting the plan.

ETDs more than 24 hours in the future

AvPlan will pop up a “Please confirm” message if you submit a plan with an ETD that is more than 24 hours in the future. This is not because such ETDs are invalid; it is because experience indicates that ETDs this far in the future have sometimes been submitted with an incorrect date – we are just trying to save you the hassle of a controller response along the lines of “I can’t find your plan in the system”. If you do want to submit a plan more than a day in advance, then please go ahead and confirm the submission.