Submit Flight Plan

🇮🇱 עברית

Submit a flight plan (FPL)

NavAid builds the ICAO flight-plan message for the route you drew and hands it to your own mail app to file with מודיעין טיס (AIS).

Open the Flight plan panel, then press ✈ Submit flight plan.

NavAid does not send anything itself. It has no server, and filing a plan carries your name and licence — you send it, and the approval comes back to you. Everything below is a planning aid: verify against the AIP, the published NOTAMs and a proper weather brief before flight.

What comes from the route

You do not retype the route. These fields are read from the plan you just looked at:

FPL field	Taken from
Departure aerodrome + EOBT	first waypoint, and the departure time you enter
Route (field 15)	the waypoints between the two end fields, by reporting-point code
Cruise speed	the first leg's speed, as N0090
Destination + total time (EET)	last waypoint, and the route total
Date of flight (DOF)	the same instant as the departure time

Speed and total time are shown, not editable. They belong to the route — editing them here would file a plan that disagrees with your map. Change the legs instead.

The departure time is entered in local time, in quarter hours (an hour list and 00 / 15 / 30 / 45), and the message carries UTC. It is the same departure as the flight plan's ETD: the dialog starts from it while it is still ahead of the filing lead, and a time chosen here becomes the plan's ETD; the dialog shows the UTC value it will file (1740Z) next to the field. An evening departure whose UTC time falls on the previous day gets the correct DOF automatically.

The total time is filed rounded up to the next 5 minutes — nobody files 00:33, and rounding up never understates how long the plan is held open.

What you fill in once

Aircraft and pilot details persist on the device. They sync through Google Drive only when you separately enable Sync settings too, so this is usually a one-time setup. The same details serve both plan types — the ICAO message and the cross-country form:

• Call sign — three letters is enough; 4X- is printed beside the field, not typed.
• Aircraft type — ICAO designator (C172, PA28, ULAC…). Common ones are offered.
• Fuel endurance — in hours (default 5).
• Persons on board — as "pilot + n".
• Pilot in command, licence number, mobile — in Latin letters. The message is an ASCII telex; Hebrew would arrive as mojibake. The licence and mobile fields ask for digits, so a phone offers its keypad rather than the full keyboard.
• Your email — required, for both plan types. The approval comes back by mail, and if you are filing from a machine whose mail account is not yours it would otherwise reach that machine's owner. Your address is copied (CC) on the message — on the ICAO plan, and on the mail the cross-country form opens to the FPL desk.

Under Advanced: wake category, equipment and transponder codes (L, S, C suit most light aircraft) — each with a tooltip explaining the letters — and the filing address. All four remember what you last filed, and each carries its own ↻ to restore that one field without disturbing the other three — the three codes to their shipped defaults, the address to whatever the chosen flight type publishes.

Which plan you file

The flight type is the first field in the dialog, and your route decides what is available:

Your route	What you can file
Every point is a published airfield or reporting point	ICAO message to AIS. The cross-country option is greyed out — a flight along the published routes is not a מרחב flight (א׳-11 §2.ח).
Any point is off the published network (a strip, a field, a coordinate)	Cross-country form. The ICAO option is greyed out: that message says the flight follows the published infrastructure, and it does not.

Choosing the cross-country form takes you straight to it — there is no ICAO message step, and no filing acknowledgements, because nothing is filed by mail from there.

Where it is filed

The address comes from the AIP, pre-filled — not a suggestion:

Flight type	Address (AIP א׳-11 §3.ב)
Along published routes (טיסה בנתיבים)	ais@iaa.gov.il — or by telephone
Cross-country (טיסת מרחב)	fpl@iaa.gov.il, email only

Every filed plan carries a one-line attribution — Created using NavAid — https://navaid.supino.org — comments and feedback: navaid@supino.org — so the desk receiving it knows what produced it and where to send a complaint about the format.

You can type a different address under Advanced; it is remembered on that device. The published address itself is deliberately not stored as your preference, so if the AIP changes, NavAid follows it.

Two things guard that override, because it decides where the plan goes:

• It is named on screen before your mail app opens — Not the published AIS address — this plan will be sent to: followed by the address. Your mail client also shows To: before you send, but by then you have left NavAid.
• It never leaves the device. Unlike the rest of the profile, the filing address is not carried to your other devices by Drive sync — a recipient does not belong in a synced settings blob, where one override would quietly become every device's default. Type it again on each device you file from. Your own address (copied on every plan) is synced, since a wrong one costs you your copy but cannot misdirect the plan.

A cross-country plan is not an ICAO message at all — the AIP takes it on its own tabular form (נספח ב׳). NavAid fills that form for you: see the cross-country form below. Nothing is ever mailed to the FPL desk as a text message.

The cross-country form

For a flight off the published routes, NavAid draws the authority's own form (א׳-11 נספח ב׳) as a facsimile — the same rows, the same column order, the header and footer as printed. It stays in Hebrew whatever language the app is in: it is that document, not a translation of it. On a narrow screen the tables scroll sideways rather than squeezing their columns, so no value is ever cut off.

It is largely the same information as the ICAO plan, so you never type anything twice. Everything is entered in the submit dialog — for either plan — and the form is the printable result of it. The cross-country extras (company, purpose of flight, alternate field) appear in the dialog when you pick that flight type.

On the sheet, values that came from the dialog are shown greyed and read-only, with a tooltip pointing back to where they are changed; the boxes the form owns are outlined and editable. A line at the top says which is which. Nothing that is locked is ever blank — if the dialog had nothing to give, the box is yours to fill.

Filled in for you:

On the form	From
Registration, aircraft type, pilot name, licence, mobile, persons, fuel time	your saved profile — shared with the ICAO plan
Date and estimated departure	carried over from the dialog
Final landing time	your departure time plus the route's total
כללי טיסה	VFR
מהירות בקשר IAS	the Default speed under Settings
פירוט הנתיבים — one row per point	the route: WGS-84 position, planned altitude, estimated time

The route rows are the part that is tedious to copy by hand.

Editable on the sheet: the route detail cells, the destination and landing time (they come from the route, and you may want to adjust them), the רת"א declarations, כללי טיסה, אישורים מצורפים, תיאומים, the notes box AIS fills in, and the signatures. The mobile for queries is not editable here: it is the number the dialog already required, so it is locked like the rest of the profile and Clear form leaves it alone. Clear form wipes what you typed there and the signatures, after a confirm — it leaves the dialog's values, the VFR rules line and the generated route table alone.

The same details are required for both plans, checked by the same code before the form is drawn: a blank licence refuses a cross-country plan exactly as it refuses an ICAO message, and the message names the fields that are missing.

Signatures — draw the pilot's and the briefer's signature with a finger or a mouse, so the form can be signed before you save it rather than printed, signed and scanned.

✉ Mail to the FPL desk opens your mail app addressed to the desk with you copied in, for you to attach the PDF you saved — a web page cannot attach a file itself, and mailto: has no way to carry an attachment at all.

Print / Save as PDF opens your browser's print dialog. Choose Save as PDF as the destination to get a file to attach to the mail, or a printer if you would rather sign on paper. (A web page cannot write a PDF by itself, which is why it goes through the print dialog.)

Timing rules it checks

Warnings, never blocks — you may be phoning it in, or filing for tomorrow:

• Not later than 60 minutes before departure (§3.ד.1א).
• Not too early: a departure at or before 17:00 may be filed from 18:00 the day before; a later departure must be filed on the day of the flight (§3.ד.1ב).
• The plan is valid from 30 minutes before the filed time until 60 minutes after for a domestic VFR flight (§5). Miss that window and you file again.
• You must receive the approval back from AIS (§4).

Both ends should be airfields

A plan is normally filed field to field. If an end of your route is not a known airfield, NavAid warns you and files it as ZZZZ with the point named in field 18 (DEP/ or DEST/) — ICAO's own answer — but says plainly that it will probably be declined.

ZZZZ is the ICAO convention (Doc 4444), not something the Israeli AIP writes down: א׳-11 and both its appendices use real codes throughout, and none of them mentions ZZZZ. So treat that path as a best effort rather than a documented one.

An airfield in the middle is refused

An airfield between your endpoints is not a warning — it is a refusal. One plan describes one flight, field to field: a single departure time, a single destination, a single total time. Landing at a field on the way is a second flight, and by the rules a plan may not route over an airfield either, so no single plan can describe that route.

This route lands at Ein Shemer on the way, so it is two flight plans, not one — file the first leg to Ein Shemer, then a second plan onward.

The field is named (by name, not code — and all of them if there are several) so you know where to split. Nothing is built, so there is no review step and no submit button. Reporting points in the middle are the ordinary case and are untouched.

What the mail contains

Above the ICAO block the body opens with a plain-language summary the desk can read:

Flight plan on the low-level transit routes

Departure from Herzliya at 11:05 local time

Route: Shefayim - Apollonia - Arena - ...

Landing at Herzliya at 11:35

(FPL-4XDAZ-VG
...

The preamble follows the UI language — a Hebrew session writes it in Hebrew. The (FPL-…) block is never translated: its contents are ICAO codes, and a localized field 15 would not be a flight plan.

Landing time is departure plus the filed EET. Where either is missing the line is dropped rather than a time being invented.

A leg that needs a clearance is refused

Two kinds of published segment cannot appear in a filed plan:

• Army airways — not available to a civil flight at all.
• ATC-approval corridors — opened only by a real-time clearance from control. A plan naming one is not accepted.

Neither is a warning, for the same reason the mid-route airfield is not: the plan would come back rejected, so there is nothing to acknowledge and carry on with.

This route is flown down ENGDI–MZDOT, which control opens only in real time — a plan naming it is not accepted. Route around it, or keep the leg and request it in the air instead of filing it.

Nothing is hidden. These legs stay on the map with their altitudes, and a point you place yourself is always kept — filling in the reporting points on the way only ever adds between the points you drew. Choosing to fly such a leg is yours to arrange with control; it is only the plan that cannot name it.

What changes is that the app will never pick one for you: neither auto-route on the map nor the reporting points filled in at filing time will route onto one, even when it is the shortest way. You may still fly it — ask on frequency.

Only a direct segment between two consecutive points counts. Two points with no published segment between them are the ordinary "no published chain" case, and two points joined by a longer way round are flown that way.

Before it can be sent

The boxes the official filing page asks for must be ticked. Two always:

• I checked this plan against the AIP and the published NOTAMs
• I checked the weather forecast

A third appears when you are landing at a known airfield, naming it — the filing page carries the same one (תאמתי עם מפעיל מנחת מצדה):

• I coordinated the landing with the operator of <field>
• at a field publishing a clearance or ATIS frequency (LLBG, LLER, LLHA, LLHZ, LLIB, LLPL) the wording follows §2.ח instead: I coordinated the landing with <field> tower, and will keep continuous radio contact

That frequency is a proxy for a controlled field, not a declaration of one — the wording asks you to call the tower and never claims NavAid knows the airspace class. It is your declaration either way; the app verifies nothing. The departure field gets no box: you are standing on it.

Press submit with any outstanding and it says Confirm the checks above before submitting the plan. and marks them.

Requesting parking at the destination

Several Israeli fields require parking to be arranged before you depart, and the AIP names where to ask. When your destination is one of them, a Request parking button appears beside Submit flight plan.

Field	What the AIP asks for	Where
LLHZ Herzliya	parking over an hour, overnight or for maintenance needs the airfield manager's prior approval, arranged with the operations centre before you leave your origin field	llhz.ops@iaa.gov.il, cc MerkazTi@iaa.gov.il
LLHA Haifa	the helicopter apron G stand, coordinated in advance by email	mail_haifaairport@iaa.gov.il
LLEY Ein Yahav	parking coordination	yonatan@arava.co.il
LLBS Beer Sheva	landing coordination before arrival	Office@ayit.co.il
LLMZ Masada	all activity requires prior coordination; you may not enter the airfield area without arranging it by phone first	Avib@ma-tamar.co.il · 050-5969324
LLFK Pik	prior coordination with the operator	HCL-PIK@MEGOLAN.ORG.IL · 04-6969777
LLES Ein Shemer	landing only in coordination with the licensed operator	050-4245652
LLRS Rishon	all activity requires prior coordination	052-5040014
LLKZ Ktziot	names parking itself — aircraft parking by prior arrangement	08-943-3600
LLMG Megiddo · LLBO Habonim · LLKS Kiryat Shmona	visiting aircraft coordinate in advance	04-6528847 · 04-6391068 · 04-6943646

The button opens a dialog rather than jumping straight to your mail app, because the AIP asks for things the plan cannot know:

• Parking — transit (over an hour), overnight, or maintenance.
• Expected departure from the destination — date and time, both required. This is not taken from the plan: when you leave again is not in it, and an overnight stay departs the following day, so a prefilled date would be a guess.
• Refuelling and free-text notes.

Everything else is written from the plan you have already filled in — registration, type, pilot, licence, mobile, persons on board, both aerodromes and the date. The message is shown in full and you can edit it; once you do, changing the options above stops rewriting it. Times carry the clock they are on (19:30 LT (16:30Z)), since you type local and the desk reads Zulu.

Open in mail hands it to your mail app; Copy is there for a device with no mail app set up. Where the field also publishes a phone, it appears beside the address as a link that dials it.

The button is always offered at an aerodrome, including one this table does not list — its absence would read as nothing to arrange here, and that is not something the dataset can promise (the first pass over the AIP missed five of the fields above). What it does depends on what the AIP publishes:

• an address — opens the dialog described here;
• a phone only — says No email defined in AIP for <ICAO> and gives you the number as a link that dials it;
• neither — says No parking contact on file for <ICAO> — check the AIP.

A destination that is not an aerodrome dims the button instead, so it keeps its place and says why rather than vanishing.

The rules and addresses are read from the AIP and shipped in airfields.json. Confirm against the current AIP before you rely on one: aerodrome text pages are amended without notice.

If nothing opens

mailto: fails silently on a device with no mail app set up — no error, nothing to detect. After you press submit, the dialog shows the address to use; press Copy and send the plan yourself.

Worked example

(FPL-4XHLH-VG
-C172/L-S/C
-LLHZ1740
-N0090VFR APOLN ARENA
-LLES0020
-DOF/260803 RMK/PIC ISRAEL ISRAELI LICENSE 1234 CELL 0541234567
-E/0500 P/002)

The shape follows the AIP's own sample (א׳-11 נספח א׳) exactly, including N0090VFR with no separator and the closing paren tight against P/nnn. The mail subject (FPL 4XHLH LLHZ-LLES 260803) is NavAid's own convention — the AIP does not prescribe one.

See also

• Flight Plan — the per-leg table this is filed from
• Route and Legs
• Settings and Persistence — where navaid.fpl.* lives