SEE FRA project successfully completed on 7th November 2019

Starting from 7th of November 2019 the Aircraft Operators will be able to plan their flights freely across the airspace of Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania 24/7 without the limitations of the geographical boundaries. This is the completion of the SEE FRA project (South East Europe Free Route Airspace) for implementing 24/7 cross border free route operations across the airspace of the 3 states.
The new flight planning rules significantly optimize the flight trajectories not only by using the shortest connections but also allowing the use of the most effective routings when the impacts on the flights are inevitable e.g adverse weather avoidance.
According to the simulations the synergistic effect of all improvements has the potential to save daily average up to 10 000 NM of the total mileage which represents 80 tons of fuel savings, 250 tons less of CO2 emissions and 26 hours of flying time on a busy day.
As a future step Slovakia, as a part of SEEN FRA project (South East Europe Night Free Route Airspace) together with Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, will assess the opportunities to join the SEE FRA airspace as 24/7 free route operations are already implemented within Slovakian airspace.
The activities related to SEE FRA and national FRA projects are in accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 716/2014 which provides for the individual ANSPs to cooperate for the introduction of Free Route Airspace above FL310 throughout Europe by the end of 2021.
It should be acknowledged that the Network Manager has a central role as an enabler and driver of the airspace changes at European level. Thanks to the active involvement and full support of EUROCONTROL Member States and EUROCONTROL Agency, the Aircraft Operators will be able to fly on optimised profiles, using less fuel, hence reducing aviation´s environmental footprint.