Free route airspace (FRA) is a designated airspace volume where airspace users may plan flight routes freely between designated points, with few restrictions and without the need to stick to airways or predefined direct segments.
It is only applicable during flight planning phase. After a flight plan has been filed and approved, the operation is subject to its approved flight plan and, when applicable, to ATC clearances.
Although FRA is used in many European countries, its benefits often stop at national borders due to airspace fragmentation, managed by different air navigation service providers (ANSPs).
Cross-border FRA changes this: it allows aircraft to fly user preferred routes across multiple flight information regions, not just within a single country.
IMAGE: Free route airspaces in Spain (HISPAFRA) and Portugal (FRAL)
On April 22, 2022, it is implemented HISPAFRA (Spanish free route airspace). It is composed of two cells:
(*) Excluding the ATS delegation provision by Spain to Portugal, and including the ATS delegation provision by Portugal to Spain.
HISPAFRA corresponds to an initial FRA, or structurally limited FRA. This means that, it will be possible to file flight plans with direct segments instead of using airways, but planned nominal trajectories must with trajectories that were also possible before HISPAFRA.
IMAGE: HISPAFRA chart.
On May 14, 2026, ESPORTFRA (Spain and Portugal cross-border FRA) is implemented in its first phase (see AIP ESPAÑA AIC 05/26), which is the merging of HISPAFRA (Spanish FRA) and FRAL (Portugal's FRA) to form a single FRA area. In this phase, traffic crossing the internal boundary between ESPORTFRA cells, these segments must plan via the published intermediate points.
IMAGE: ESPORTFRA chart
Free route operations offer significant opportunities to airspace users. Once fully implemented in Europe, it should allow the saving of 1 billion nautical miles, 6 million tonnes of fuel, 20 million tonnes of CO2 and 5 billion € in fuel cost, compared with current situation (source: Eurocontrol).
For air navigation service providers, free route operations improve trajectory predictability, due to a reduction in the divergence between planned and actually flown routes, and reduce the need for coordination and air-ground communications.
The cross-border FRA enhances the environmental benefits through even shorter routes and provides more airspace options when determining the user-preferred trajectory (source: COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING REGULATION (EU) 2021/116 of 1 February 2021).
The implementation of free route by ENAIRE will proceed in phases, working for the objectives in accordance with the provisions of European Implementing Regulation 2021/116.
For the removal of structural restrictions, new functionality in ENAIRE’s ATM system (SACTA) is being implemented.
ATC systems must support FRA. Supporting functions/tools may include (source: COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING REGULATION (EU) 2021/116 of 1 February 2021):
The implementation of ESPORTFRA establishes a single cross-border FRA area between Spain and Portugal. The structural limitations of the various ESPORTFRA cells will be progressively eliminated as the technical functionalities of the ATC system supporting free routing operations are advanced.
The following organizations and institutions have participated in the FRA design, specification, approval, and implementation:
With extensive collaboration and technical support from:
Other useful links:
