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Aviation glossary

Flight plan

Also: FPL, ATC flight plan, operational flight plan

Operations and flight

Details of a flight filed with air traffic services before departure: aircraft, route, level, speed, estimated times, destination and alternate airports.

What it is

The term covers two related documents. The ATC flight plan is the message filed with air traffic services in a format standardised by ICAO: flight identification, aircraft type and wake turbulence category, navigation equipment, departure airport and time, cruising speed and level, route, destination, estimated elapsed time and alternates.

The operational flight plan, prepared by the airline's dispatchers, goes much further: it calculates fuel leg by leg using the forecast wind at each point and adds reserves for contingencies, for reaching the alternate and a final reserve.

In Europe, plans are filed with the Eurocontrol Network Manager, which validates the route and can allocate a regulated take-off time if a sector is about to overload. Transatlantic flights often file one of the North Atlantic tracks published each day.

Related terms

Air traffic controlThe service that keeps aircraft safely apart and orders traffic on the ground and in the air through clearances and instructions passed by radio. Call signName by which an aircraft is identified in radio communications with air traffic control, such as Speedbird or Lufthansa followed by the flight number. Alternate airportAirport to which an aircraft can proceed if landing at the intended destination becomes impossible or inadvisable, specified in the flight plan. SlotPermission to land or take off at a congested airport on a given date and time, or a departure time allocated to manage the flow of air traffic. Flight levelAn altitude expressed in hundreds of feet and referenced to the standard pressure of 1013.25 hPa, giving aircraft at height a shared vertical reference.
Whole glossary

Cite

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This page was last updated on October 9, 2026

APA

Vuelopedia. (2026, October 9). Flight plan. Retrieved October 17, 2026, from https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan

MLA

“Flight plan.” Vuelopedia, Fundación Poderia, 9 Oct. 2026, vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan. Accessed 17 Oct. 2026.

Chicago

Vuelopedia. “Flight plan.” Fundación Poderia. Last modified October 9, 2026. https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan.

Harvard

Vuelopedia (2026) Flight plan. Available at: https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan (Accessed: 17 October 2026).

BibTeX

@misc{vuelopedia_en_glossary_flight_plan,
  author       = {{Vuelopedia}},
  title        = {{Flight plan}},
  publisher    = {Fundación Poderia},
  year         = {2026},
  date         = {2026-10-09},
  url          = {https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan},
  howpublished = {\url{https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan}},
  urldate      = {2026-10-17},
  note         = {Accessed 2026-10-17}
}

Wikipedia

{{cite web |url=https://vuelopedia.org/en/glossary/flight-plan |title=Flight plan |website=Vuelopedia |publisher=Fundación Poderia |date=2026-10-09 |access-date=2026-10-17 |language=en}}

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