Introduction
Manually link the flight plan from a planned flight with an active flight
In this topic, you learn how to link a flight plan to a tracked flight when linking doesn't happen automatically.
We estimate that this will take 3 minutes to complete.
Detailed explanation
You can link a flight plan to a tracked flight when linking doesn’t happen automatically (because some data didn’t match).
When you link a flight plan of a planned flight with an active flight, you correct missing or incorrect data in the tracked flight with the data from the other flight.
For N-FP users, more flights link automatically if your N-Tracking administrator enables the "Easy matching" option for flight plans and when the following is true:
- Registration matches
- Callsign/flight number matches
- Departure airport matches
- Time of departure is within current window
- Only one “matching” N-FP flight plan exists.
If there are more than one possible matching flight plans, you, the Dispatcher, can continue to use your judgment and manually link flight plans.
You must be logged in as a user with reporter rights to perform this procedure.
Click SCX751.
Imagine that in this scenario, tail N808SY (flight SCX 751) is showing the wrong flight path or no flight path. To correct that, first investigate the data on the Flight Details pane for that flight.
Data that could be missing (although not in this case), include the call sign or the arrival or departure airport codes. On occasion, any of these data elements could be missing from the FlightAware feed.
Set the Flight Plan slider so that the flight plan continues to display after you close the Flight Details pane.
Click the Flight Plan slider.
Click anywhere on the map.
If you know there is a flight later in the schedule that uses the appropriate flight plan, click the flight in the PLANNED section of the Flight list that you know contains the correct flight plan.
Click SCX752.
Click the Link Flight Plan button.
Review the displayed message carefully to be sure that you want the displayed data to be linked to the active flight.
If this is not the replacement you want to make, click Cancel.
Click the Link button.
When you click Link, the missing or incorrect flight plan is replaced and the new flight plan will be used for any alert purposes.
Next, look at another example, where you might want to manually link a flight plan to an active flight.
In this example, the same flight number displays in both the TRACKED and the PLANNED sections of the Flight list.
The active flight SEJ7043 (in TRACKED) is missing its city pair (departure and arrival airport codes).
There is a later flight in the PLANNED section of the Flight list for a flight that flies the same route.
Click SEJ7043.
Click the Link Flight Plan button.
Click the Link button.
After a short delay, SEJ7043 disappears from the PLANNED section and the flight's city pair appears with the flight ID for SEJ7043 in the TRACKED section of the Flight list.
Click the flight ID (SEJ7043) again to view the Flight Details pane.
Click SEJ7043.
Click the Flight Plan slider.
Optionally, zoom in to a zoom level of 20 nm. At that zoom, you can read waypoint labels on the map.
Click the Zoom in (+) button.
At a zoom level of 20 nm, you can see the flight path and read the names of waypoints on the flight plan.
Optionally, minimize the Flight list.
Click the Minimize button.
With the Flight list minimized, you can see more of the flight path on the map.
SUCCESS
Congratulations! You have successfully linked flight plans manually for two different scenarios.