Flight Planning System — Flight Planning System

Overview

Before any commercial flight departs, a dispatcher — or, for many smaller operators, the pilot-in-command — must produce an operational flight plan. ICAO Annex 6 requires operators conducting international commercial air transport to prepare such a plan for every flight, covering the intended route, fuel required, and alternate airports; a Flight Planning System is the software that performs this calculation in practice.

What It Calculates

Inputs and Outputs

An FPS ingests live weather data, NOTAMs, aircraft performance databases, and airline route and cost preferences, then outputs the computerized flight plan, the ATC flight plan filing, and the fuel figures used downstream. The resulting plan feeds the cockpit — often via an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) — and the Load Control System, which needs the fuel figure to finalize the load sheet.

Vendors

Widely used flight planning platforms include Lufthansa Systems' Lido/Flight, Jeppesen (a Boeing company) JetPlan, and Honeywell's GoDirect Flight Planning, among others; several are also embedded within broader Electronic Flight Bag and airline operations-control suites rather than sold as standalone products.

Regulatory Basis

Requirements for operational flight plans and dispatch release trace back to ICAO Annex 6 and are implemented regionally through rules such as EASA's Air Operations regulation and the FAA's 14 CFR Parts 121/135, which require that a flight not depart without a valid flight plan meeting fuel and alternate-airport requirements.