ATC Flight Plan — Page 242, Lesson 250

I want to walk you through the instructions for inserting Repetitive Flight Plan data — what we call RPL data. This is the section of the ATC Flight Plan chapter that tells you exactly how to fill in each item when you're submitting a repetitive flight plan listing. Let's start with Item A: OPERATOR. Here, you simply insert the name of the operator — that's the airline or company operating the flight. Item B: ADDRESSEE(S). This is where you insert the name of the agency or agencies that the States have designated to administer RPLs for the areas of responsibility along your route of flight. In other words, you're telling the system which authorities need to receive this repetitive flight plan. Item C: DEPARTURE AERODROME(S). You insert the location indicator — that's the ICAO four-letter code — of the departure aerodrome or aerodromes. Item D: DATE. On each page of your submission, you insert the date the listing was submitted, written as a six-figure group: year, month, day. So for example, the 15th of March 2025 would be 250315. Item E: SERIAL NUMBER. This is a two-part identifier. You insert the serial number of the submission as two numerics indicating the last two digits of the year, then a dash, then the sequential number of the submission for that year. And you start with the numeral 1 each new year. So if this is the third submission in 2025, it would be 25-3. Item F: PAGE OF. You insert the page number and the total number of pages being submitted. So if you're on page 2 of a 5-page submission, you'd write something like 2/5. Item G: SUPPLEMENTARY DATA AT. This is where you insert the name of a contact — a person or office — where the information normally provided under Item 19 of the standard flight plan (the FPL) is kept readily available and can be supplied without delay. Item 19 of the FPL covers things like emergency equipment, survival equipment, and fuel endurance. So for an RPL, you're not putting that detail on every listing; instead, you're telling them where to get it quickly if needed. Item H: ENTRY TYPE. This tells the system what you're doing with each flight plan in the listing. You insert a minus sign (-) for each flight plan that is to be deleted from the listing. You insert a plus sign (+) for each initial listing, and in the case of subsequent submissions, for each flight plan that was not listed in the previous submission. There's an important note here: no information is required under this item for any flight plan which is unchanged from the previous submission. So if a flight plan is staying exactly the same, you leave Item H blank for that entry. Item I: VALID FROM. You insert the first date — again year, month, day — upon which the flight is scheduled to operate. This is the start of the validity period. Item J: VALID UNTIL. You insert the last date upon which the flight is scheduled to operate as listed. If the duration is unknown, you insert UFN — that stands for 'until further notice'. So to summarise, these items A through J give you a structured way to tell the ATC system who the operator is, who needs to see the plan, where you're departing from, when the listing was submitted, how to identify it, where supplementary emergency information is kept, what changes you're making to the listing, and the date range the flight plans are valid for.