Temporary accommodation measures due to COVID-19 for non-NAT DLM compliant aircraft in the NAT airspace

This temporary accommodation for non-DLM compliant aircraft is agreed on the basis that the NAT service provider States and organisations will ensure that the associated safety management work has been completed prior to implementation and there would no consequential safety and/or operational limitations within the NAT and its interface areas with other Regions.

The objective of this proposal is to offer more flexibility to aircraft operators when planning their NAT operations in the evolving COVID-19 crisis. It is recognised that there may be situations where, due to this crisis situation, aircraft operators may need to dispatch non-DLM compliant aircraft to operate in the NAT.

The accommodation will be in effect from 1 April 2020, initially for 3 months.

In addition to this temporary accommodation measure for the NAT Region Data Link Mandate, NAT airspace users are advised that due to the decrease in traffic caused by the COVID-19 crisis, there is a significantly higher chance of flights being cleared as requested. Therefore, dispatchers and pilots are encouraged to file and request their optimal profiles at all stages of the flight, including for example, optimal route, flight plan step climbs, pilot requested cruise climbs and 'ECON' speeds, which has been enabled by the recent NAT implementation of operations without assigned fixed speed (OWAFS).