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Flight Plan Equipment codes for Dummies

As most pilots are probably aware a lot of new equipment codes has been introduced over the last couple of years – and you need to get it all right in order not to have your flightplan rejected by Eurocontrol.

 

For many GA pilots finding the right codes can be a bit of a challenge. If you get it wrong you risk that your flight plan will be rejected or that ATC expects you to follow procedures that you are not able to perform.

 

The official documentation can be quite overwhelming and refers to lots of codes that most GA pilots will in practice never need. The following is a miniguide to help you get it right:

 

The most important thing to understand is that there needs to be a link between information in field 10 and 10b EQUIPMENT and what is indicated in field 18 OTHER INFORMATION.

 

Field 10:

Only COM RV
Standard equipment (COM/NAV/ILS) SRV
DME D
ADF F
GPS G
8.33 radio Y

 

So a typically IFR equipped aircraft would have something like: SDFGRVY. Now the PBN codes in field 18 must be matching this.

A typical older GPS like Garmin GNC300/330XL, GPS164, GPS155/155XL will have the code PBN/B2S2.

Newer non-Waas GPS equipment like Garmin 4xx/5xx will be PBN/A1B2C2D2L1O2S1.

Newer GPS equipment with WAAS and LPV (glide slope capability) will have PBN/A1B2C2D2L1O2S2

Next comes the transponder codes in field 10b. Before ADS-B this was just “C“ or “S”.

If you have a newer transponder with Extended Squitter (ES), meaning it sends out a full ADS-B signal including your GPS position the code is B1. If you have both ADS-B “out” and “in” then the code is B2.

Again this requires additional information in field 18 with the hex code of the transponder. For instance CODE/45C213.

If one does not know the hex code of the aircraft in question it can easily be found on for instance flightradar24.com.

This miniguide was made by AOPA Denmark board member Per Jensen who is the founder of the company AirSupport which helps many operators manage their flight plans. Should you have comments or questions your are welcome to email Per at pj@airsupport.dk