The Upgrade of the PANSA ATM systems are necessary for next Cross-border Free Route Airspace (FRA) operations implementation steps, further enhancing and scaling the FRA operations between PANSA and its partners. This upgradewill bring benefits to the network, by enabling the extension of cross-border FRA with other Air Navigation ServiceProvider (ANSPs) (e.g. Germany, Sweden, Czechia) and improving current cross-border operations with Luftfartsverket(LFV) and Air Navigation Services of the Czech Republic (ANS CR).

The scope of the IP consists of two threads: “Technical” and “Operational”.
Within the “Technical” thread, PANSA intends to develop and deploy new functionalities in the Air Traffic Management(ATM) system, needed to fully support these Cross-border operations, in two of the ATM systems:
1. For the Flight Plan and Data Management ATM System “Traffic” – to fully support the Cross-border FRA operations,PANSA will adapt the system of processing flight plans and their redistribution to the implementation of FRA in FIR Warsaw. The scope of the project includes the development of requirements, software development and implementation of IT system for operational use. The system upgrade will be divided into 2 stages:
• adaptation of system functionalities to support Cross-border FRA airspace with Czechia and Sweden;
• deployment of new functionalities, exchange and refabrication of the system modules responsible for flight plan trajectory management and the interfaces with the ATM system supporting flight data exchange.
2. For ATM system - “P_21”: The first upgrade of the system P_21 made possible the FRA operations in FIR EPWW and later, in 2022, the first cross-border operations. Now a second upgrade is necessary to support the more complex requirements to process cross-border operations, consisting in the implementation of functionalities supporting air traffic management within the Cross-border FRA, including: expansion of the working area, development of trajectory management, modification of tools supporting conflict management and, development of On-Line Data Interchange (OLDI) communication.

Within the “Operational” thread, PANSA will develop the operational procedures, revise and update the Route Availability Document (RAD), perform the system training and operational training and other operational activities necessary to support the deployment of Cross-border FRA. The following stages will be implemented:
1. Cross-border FRA operations with Sweden and Czechia – implementation date in November 2024;
2. Cross-border FRA operations with Ukraine;
3. Cross-border FRA operations with Germany – target implementation date beyond 2026 – in this case PANSA- within this IP- will start the preparation of the necessary activities.

In order to minimalize the negative impact on environment, PANSA continues enhancing and implementing the FRA concept in EPWW Flight Information Regions (FIR), both internally and in a cross-border dimension.
The whole FRA implementation plan is divided into several phases, of which some are already implemented:
1. FRA inside EPWW FIR (at full scale) – implemented in FEB 2019,
2. Cross-border FRA operations with Lithuania (implemented in Feb 2022) and Slovakia.
3. Cross-border FRA operations with Sweden and Czechia – project is already in development phase with target implementation date in November 2024
4. Cross-border FRA operations with Ukraine – supporting the future implementation with Ukraine, with target implementation date 2025/2026 (depends on the war situation in Ukraine). This is outside of the scope of this Grant Agreement
5. Cross-border FRA operations with Germany – target implementation beyond 2026. This is outside of the scope of this Grant Agreement

Simulations by EUROCONTROL and the SDM allow us to estimate the savings of the project implementation in approximately 1.89 Miles per flight in average. On a yearly basis (not considering the impact of the war in Ukraine that currently decreases the number of flights by around -25%), the foreseen reductions per year would be around:
• 690000 Nautical Miles
• 94000 minutes of flight time
• 5600 tons of fuel
• 17800 tons of CO2.

This IP is interdependent with the following PANSA CEF awarded IPs:
- #131AF3 “1st Phase of the upgrade of the P_21 PEGASUS system to SES.AR Functionalities.”
- 2016_085_AF3 “ATM System Upgrade Towards Free Route Airspace”
- 2016_087_AF3 “iTEC Tests, Validations and Planning (iTEC-TVP)”