04/11/2026
A day's flying on a page...
Back in the day there used to be a heavily abbreviated flight planning and notification system for the major airlines. This system used published tables of flight planning data which provided not only time intervals between waypoints, but also fuel burn figures. From these tables, a Standard Flight Plan Designator Number (SFPDN) was extracted which gave the particular, standardised data for each sector on the day. This was then used to create the flight plan.
This system of abbreviation allowed an entire day's flying to be notified on a single flight plan form - an important consideration when flight plans were manually typed for entry into the teleprinter system. It also greatly simplified the flight planning process in the days when airline pilots did their own flight plans.
The example here is a day's flight plans for Airlines of Western Australia Bae 146 VH-JJT under Captain Charles Morris on 20 April 1992. The form is DA1642, the 'Standard IFR Flight Planning Form'. The plan covers five sectors: Perth-Kalgoorlie-Perth-Yulara-Alice Springs-Cairns. The aircraft type 'Q' represents the BAe 146 and the SFPDN numbers relate to the particular forecast winds on the day. The third leg contains a route modifier '02', which was used to select a particular route when there was more than one option.
When transmitted by teleprinter, the first sector of the plan would appear like this:
AAA350 R JJT 2230 Q 4PHKGXX F270 171
..and so on. Very efficient.
Since ATC also had the tabular data, that was easily extracted from the abbreviated plan.
The lower part of the form, not normally transmitted, contains the fuel calculations for each sector. Note that the plan has been checked and signed by the ATC briefer in Perth, as well as by Captain Morris.
This flight planning system was discontinued in the early 1990s as it was incompatible with the then-new TAAATS ATC system.
(Images: DA1642-CAHS/Charles Morris collection ; VH-JJQ-CAHS/Mal Billet collection)
