In November 2014, ICAO introduced an amendment to PANS OPS (ICAO Doc 8168) which called for a change to the Chart Identification of Instrument Approach Procedures (IAP). This change was to bring the chart title in line with the navigation application being applied. This change would remove RNAV from approach chart titles and replace it with RNP.
ICAO had foreseen a period of up to 8 years during which this transition would take place; however, it quickly became apparent that an uncoordinated transition would lead to confusion for pilots and controllers alike and could even raise safety issues when there were different chart titles for the same type of approach at different runways at the same aerodrome.
Therefore, ICAO has developed a transition plan for change to instrument flight procedure approach chart identification from RNAV to RNP. This transition plan is described in ICAO Circular 353 and an unedited version is available below. The transition plan foresees a regional transition in chart titles coordinated by the ICAO Regional Offices with the PBN Programme Office at ICAO HQ overseeing and tracking the global transition.
The new requirements for the IAP charts are:
- New chart identification
- PBN Box
The following table describes when a suffix will be added behind the chart title. It should be noted that without a LNAV minima line a suffix is to be used:
The Transition Plan foresees the following actions undertaken by the ICAO Regional Offices and by the State.
The ICAO EUR Office is responsible for:
- Coordinating the time period required for a complete transition within each State
- Calculating the total time required for a complete regional transition
- Developing a regional transition plan and coordinating the timeframe with ICAO HQ
- Initiating the transition
- Monitoring the progress of the transition
- Ensuring the regional transition is completed on time
The State is responsible for:
- Developing State strategy
- Drafting State transition plan
- Communicating with ICAO EUR
- Executing the State’s transition plan
- Communicating with all stakeholders
- Awareness campaign
- Training requirements for pilots and ATCos
The ANSPs will be responsible for:
- Assessment of volume of change:
- No. of procedures impacted?
- Any pre-existing planned changes?
- Are these to be combined with transition changes?
- Prioritisation agreed with the State’s NSA
- Define change priorities:
- Airport
- Size/importance
- Geographic clustering
- Establish capacity of AIS & datahouses
- Define time required for all changes to be complete
- Agree with NSA how approvals will be granted if change is just chart title and PBN box.
- Training for ATCos.
Therefore, it is highly recommended that each State establish a project team to manage transition.
The ICAO Regional office in Paris has published a State letter, EUR/NAT 19-0253.TEC (NIA/DAC), calling for the EUR/NAT region to take the necessary measures to implement the transition to the new IFP Chart identification according to the ICAO EUR Regional Transition Plan for change to Instrument Flight Procedure Approach Chart Identification from RNAV to RNP 1st Edition (May 2019), available on the ICAO EUR/NAT website.
This European transition period is from June 2019 to December 2020. The ICAO/EUR transition plan can be found here.
EUROCONTROL has developed a RNP Approach Chart Title Change Factsheet to support this transition. The Factsheet is aimed to provide awareness of the change for pilots and controllers as over the transition period there will be a mixture of new and old titles on different approach charts.
