Everything the earlier modules computed now has to be told to air traffic services, and it is told on a form whose every box is numbered. The filing rules (when a plan must be submitted, and how long it survives a delay) belong to the air law course; this lesson is about the form itself: why it is rigid, what goes in each transmitted item, and what stays behind with the briefing office.
Why a fixed format
The ICAO flight plan is rigid on purpose. A fixed format lets ATS computers parse the message without a human reading it, keeps the same box meaning the same thing in every State, and lets one filing travel across every boundary the route crosses. Free text would need interpreting; item 15 never does.
The transmitted items
The items the exam asks about, in the order the form holds them:
Item 7 — aircraft identification: the registration or the ICAO callsign, as it will be used on the radio.
Item 8 — flight rules and type: rules I, V, Y or Z, where Y begins IFR and later becomes VFR and Z begins VFR and later becomes IFR; type S scheduled, N non-scheduled, G general aviation, M military, X other.
Item 9 — number and type of aircraft and wake-turbulence category: H at 136,000 kg maximum take-off mass or more, M above 7,000 kg and below 136,000 kg, L at 7,000 kg or less.
Item 10 — equipment: before the slash the radio and navigation fit, with S standing for the standard VHF, VOR and ILS (the example string's other letters each name a fit: D is DME, G is GNSS, R is PBN approved, W is RVSM approved); after the slash the surveillance fit, C a mode A and C transponder, S a mode S transponder with pressure altitude and identification.
Item 13 — departure aerodrome and time: the four-letter ICAO indicator and the EOBT; an aerodrome without an indicator files ZZZZ and names itself under DEP/ in item 18.
Item 15 — cruising speed, level and route: speed as N (knots), K (km/h) or M (Mach), level as F (flight level) or A (altitude in hundreds of feet), with S and M for their metric cousins, then the route in airway and waypoint language.
Item 16 — destination, total estimated elapsed time and up to two destination alternates. The total EET runs for IFR from take-off to the designated point, defined by reference to navigation aids, from which the instrument approach is expected to begin (with no such aid, overhead the destination); for VFR, to overhead the destination.
Item 18 — other information: 0 (zero) when there is none, otherwise indicators such as DOF/ (date of flight), PBN/, EET/ with elapsed times to boundary points, REG/, RMK/ and their kin.
Item 19 — supplementary information, the one item that does not travel: see below.
Item 19: what stays behind
Item 19 is completed with the rest but retained by the unit the plan is submitted to, held for search and rescue rather than transmitted in the FPL message. Its fields are the survival ledger: E/ the fuel endurance in hours and minutes, P/ the persons on board, R/ the emergency radio fit, S/ survival equipment, J/ jackets, D/ dinghies, A/ the aircraft's colour and markings, N/ remarks and C/ the pilot-in-command. When a flight goes missing, item 19 is what the searchers open first.
FPL versus RPL
An operator flying the same line every day need not file it every day. The repetitive flight plan (RPL) covers a series of frequently recurring, regularly operated flights with identical basic features, submitted once by the operator for retention and repetitive use by ATS units: filed for a whole season in bulk rather than flight by flight. The individual FPL remains the tool for everything else, and for the days the recurring flight is NOT itself: a changed aircraft, a changed route or a one-off cancellation is notified against the stored plan, and a flight that no longer matches its stored features files individually.