Oceanic air traffic centers in Europe will start issuing a “CONFIRM ASSIGNED ROUTE” CPDLC uplink message next month to all Fans 1/A aircraft on the North Atlantic Tracks (NAT) as a means to check the downlinked route from the aircraft against the route held in the flight data processing system. This datalink message provides the flight crew with a “SEND” prompt, which downlinks (via CPDLC) the active route from the aircraft’s FMS to ATC.

“If you’ve operated on the ‘half-tracks’ in the NAT recently, you’ll have seen this,” noted flight-planning company Flight Service Bureau. “With the half-tracks, the potential for nav errors are now (quite a lot, perhaps) higher than before. Waypoints are that bit more complicated, and 5030N 30W is a little too similar to 50N 30W.

“So, to prevent you reading back the clearance correctly and then screwing up the route in the FMS,” the center will ask via datalink for the planned route upon entering the oceanic airspace, the company said. “All you have to do is acknowledge the message, scroll through your route and check it looks OK, and send it back down to them. If it’s the same as your clearance, then that’s that. If not, or you don’t reply, you’ll get an additional message.”