Rethinking 30 years of legacy architecture: EUROCONTROL deploys iNM Flight & Flow, a single, integrated system for flight filing and flow management

EUROCONTROL's iNM - integrated Network Management - programme, designed to modernise the operational systems of the EUROCONTROL Network Manager (NM), has just accomplished its largest and most complex delivery: the release of iNM Flight & Flow within iNM programme's Wave 2.1.

iNM Flight & Flow seamlessly integrates flight planning and flow management into one single, unified system. This will significantly improve operational clarity and efficiency across Europe's skies for NM and its many operational users across Europe.

Additionally, this release includes another new feature, the NM User Interface (NMUI) Flight Application for aircraft operators (AOs). This new app is an intuitive front end for AOs that will streamline the way they file flights, and significantly enhance how they interact with NM's Flight & Flow management system.

"The release of iNM Flight & Flow as a single database is a major step towards full trajectory management. It brings key architectural, technical and operational benefits that reduce complexity and create clarity for operational users. At the same time, our brand new, integrated NMUI Flight Application for aircraft operators empowers them by offering a modern tool to navigate flight plans in an increasingly complex sky - efficiently, safely and sustainably."

This latest iNM delivery further updates EUROCONTROL's legacy operations systems, which were designed incrementally starting 30 years ago, at a time when flight planning and flow management were considered and treated as separate domains. These legacy systems have proven reliable, stable and safe - but over time, have become increasingly interdependent, prompting the need for a unified system to better serve operational staff across Europe.

iNM Flight & Flow integrates four systems into one database with a single view on flights: IFPS and IFPUV, the integrated initial flight plan processing system for flight planning and its flight plan validation system, ETFMS, the enhanced tactical flow management system responsible for flow management, and a fourth system, FAAS, the Flight Assessment and Authorisation System that verifies if flights are authorised to fly. The new integrated system is designed to handle comfortably traffic on busy days with over 37,000 daily flight plans, offering users real-time visibility into synchronised flight filing and flow management processes. This delivers a higher situational awareness for all European network users, and supports more accurate and responsive decision-making in an increasingly complex and dynamic network. Information about each flight will be delivered in a logical, sequential manner, enabling external stakeholders to receive timely and coherent updates about network activity. In the future, Flight & Flow will also enable consistent data integration for departure/arrival planning information from airports.

The NMUI Flight Application offers AOs a modernised, unified platform for managing flight operations within the European airspace network. It shows flight information in real time, merging EUROCONTROL's Collaboration Human Machine Interface (CHMI) - which visualises flight and airspace data from EUROCONTROL's Network Operations systems - and our previous flight planning tool, NMP Flight. With this release, AOs that have already registered for access to the new application can start filing their flight plans using the new NMUI Flight Application system. NM's legacy flight planning system will continue to function to ensure business continuity and a smooth transition for the users until the onboarding process for the new system is finalised in the coming months. This will be further extended next year to all front-ends (creating NMUI interfaces for Flight & Flow for air navigation service providers and aerodromes as well as aircraft operators).

The deployment of iNM Flight & Flow and the NMUI Flight Application follows on from previous iNM Waves, which started with the release of EUROCONTROL's brand-new digital platform - the foundation of our new operational systems - along with three digital products launched in October 2024; followed by the start of an incremental roll-out of the enhanced European Aeronautical Database (eEAD) which is scheduled to be completed by 2026, as well as a series of other digital products. Once complete, iNM will have modernised all of NM's operational systems, introducing a powerful, scalable and integrated digital architecture that will drive greater efficiency, safety and sustainability across the European aviation network.

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