Flight dispatch services: plan, file and monitor every leg
For charter, cargo and corporate operators who need a dispatcher on the trip. LFS builds the flight plan to your fuel policy, reviews weather and NOTAMs, files with ATC, follows the flight and re-plans when things change, while operational control stays with your operation.
Our flight dispatch services support charter and commercial operators, corporate flight departments, cargo operators and brokers who need a dispatcher on the trip without building a full operations control centre of their own. Some hand us every sector of a trip. Others use us for the legs their own team cannot cover: a new region, a night shift, a peak week, or an itinerary with several permit-heavy countries.
Dispatch support, flight planning and flight following are not the same
These terms are often used interchangeably. They describe different work, and it helps to agree which one you need before the trip.
Flight planning
Building the operational flight plan (OFP) and the ATC flight plan: route, levels, fuel, alternates and performance figures for a specific sector. See flight planning.
Dispatch support
Flight planning plus the work around it: weather and NOTAM review, airport suitability checks, filing, crew briefing packages, and coordination with permits, slots, handling and fuel so the plan matches what is actually booked on the ground.
Flight following
Watching the flight once it is airborne: tracking progress against the plan, monitoring weather and NOTAM changes at destination and alternates, and coordinating with the crew and ground parties if something changes. See real-time operations.
What stays with the operator and the crew
LFS supports your operation; it does not replace it. The aircraft operator keeps operational control as defined by its own authority and operations manual, and the pilot-in-command keeps final authority over the conduct of the flight. Where your regulator requires licensed or authorised personnel to release or exercise operational control of a flight, that responsibility stays with the people your operation designates.
In practice that means we work to your fuel policy, your minima, your alternate rules and your company procedures. The plan we produce is checked and accepted by your crew or operations staff, not imposed on them.
What we need to build a flight plan
Aircraft type, registration, equipment and performance data, or the profile used in your planning system
Your fuel policy, contingency and reserve rules, and any operator-specific minima
Departure, destination and preferred alternates, with ETD in UTC
Payload: passengers, baggage and cargo, or zero fuel weight
Crew duty limits for the day, and any planned crew change
Permit, slot and handling status for each airport, if already arranged
Try the route planner
Paste an ATC route to see overflight countries and an indicative distance and fuel figure. This is a demonstration tool, not an operational flight plan.
Recognised: ICAO airport codes (e.g. OBBI EGLF) and named fixes. Airways (e.g. UM688) are accepted but not expanded — connect Eurocontrol IFPS for full validation.
Awaiting route
Enter an ATC flight plan and press Generate. The route will plot with overflight detection, weather and NOTAMs.
Demo data. Full version connects Eurocontrol NM B2B, AVWX, FAA NOTAM API and live FMS performance.
Route, fuel and airport suitability
Route choice is a balance of distance, winds, overflight charges, permit availability and airspace restrictions. A shorter route through an FIR with a slow permit process can cost more time than a longer one through a quicker state. Fuel planning follows your policy, with tankering considered when price or availability at the destination makes it worthwhile and the weight penalty is acceptable.
Each airport on the plan, including alternates, is checked for runway and performance suitability, operating and customs hours, fuel availability, and current NOTAMs. Long overwater or remote sectors may bring ETOPS/EDTO considerations; these are planned within your operator's approval, which LFS does not issue or extend.
Weather and NOTAM review
Weather and NOTAMs are reviewed for departure, destination, alternates and the en-route picture, then reviewed again closer to departure. Items that affect the flight, such as runway closures, navaid outages or airspace restrictions, are called out in the briefing rather than buried in a long list. Our free METAR and TAF decoder and NOTAM explainer use the same formats.
Disruption and changes
When something changes, such as a delayed slot, a weather drop at destination or a crew running short on duty, the useful question is what else that change touches. The dispatcher re-plans the sector and also updates the permits, slots, handling and fuel bookings it affects, so the new plan is supported on the ground as well as on paper. See overflight permits, slots and PPR and technical stop support.
Request dispatch assistance
Send the aircraft, routing, dates and the level of support you need, whether planning only, planning and filing, or planning with flight following, through the trip request form, to ops@lfs.aero or on +973 1330 0313. We will confirm the scope, what we need from your team and how the plans will be delivered.
How LFS builds an OFP and a trip that holds together
An operational flight plan is only as good as the assumptions behind it. Dispatch at LFS starts from the regulatory floor — Part 91, Part 135, EASA NCC, OPS 1 — and layers operator preferences, performance data, fuel policy and contingency onto a route that is then defended through the trip rather than abandoned at brief.
Routing, levels and cost-index discipline
We compute three routings per leg by default: minimum-time, minimum-fuel and a balanced cost-index option. Each is checked against ATC flow restrictions, the operator's preferred FL bands and known turbulence forecasts. The captain sees all three with the trade-offs spelled out, not just the system-preferred answer.
Cost index is not 'whatever the FMS came with from the factory'. We tune it per operator based on the actual cost of crew, fuel and ground time at the destination. A charter with a tight turnaround at Nice runs a different CI than a ferry leg into a quiet field.
Fuel policy and contingency
Trip fuel, contingency, alternate, final reserve and extra fuel are computed against the regulatory minimum and the operator's policy, with the binding figure shown explicitly. For long over-water and ETOPS legs we add a wind- and temperature-deviation contingency that reflects the actual forecast spread, not a static percentage.
Alternates are selected with weather, ATC capacity and handling availability in mind — not just legal eligibility. A dispatch sheet that lists a legal alternate with no handling after 22:00 local has not actually solved the problem.
Performance: runway, weight and weather
Takeoff and landing performance is run for the actual conditions at the planned time, with a check against the worst-credible window. Contaminated-runway, OAT-deviation and wind-shift scenarios are pre-computed for the marginal stations on the trip. The captain gets the limiting figures, not just the optimistic ones.
When the weather forecast trends adverse during the dispatch window we re-run the case and reissue the OFP rather than relying on the captain to catch the swing on the cockpit ACARS.
MEL, NOTAMs and the brief
MEL items active on the aircraft are cross-checked against the trip — a deferred APU is not a problem at OMDB in February but it is a problem at HRYR in August. The dispatch sheet flags the interaction so the captain is not the first person to spot it at engine start.
NOTAMs are filtered, not dumped. A briefing pack with eighty unfiltered NOTAMs is a briefing pack the captain will skim. We surface the operational ones — runway closures, approach unavailability, navaid outages, airspace restrictions — and archive the rest behind a link.
Defending the trip in flight
Once airborne the trip is monitored against the OFP. Block time deviations, level-change suggestions from ATC, fuel-burn variances and weather updates at destination and alternates trigger a recompute when the deviation crosses a threshold. The captain is offered an updated routing or fuel posture rather than asked to do the math at FL410.
When a diversion becomes likely we pre-coordinate handling, fuel and crew at the alternate so the diversion lands into a managed station, not a cold call.
Frequently asked
Which regulators do LFS dispatchers work to?
Part 91 and Part 135 (FAA), EASA NCC and OPS 1, GACA and GCAA equivalents, plus operator OM-A overlays. The dispatch sheet shows the binding regime per leg.
Can LFS file a flight plan we have already built?
Yes. Operators with their own OFP system can hand us the route and we file, monitor and recover. We will flag any item that looks weak before filing.
How is contingency fuel computed?
Regulatory minimum, operator policy and a wind/temperature-deviation overlay against the actual forecast spread. The binding figure is shown on the OFP.
What happens if a destination drops below minima after departure?
The OCC pre-coordinates a managed diversion: handling, fuel, customs and crew transport at the alternate, with the captain offered an updated routing inside the duty envelope.
