Mitigating Flight Plan vs. Clearance Errors

Flying the filed flight plan instead of the issued clearance remains a leading cause of lateral deviations and gross navigation errors (GNEs). This is most common when a revised clearance with a route amendment is issued.

The most effective mitigation is robust standard operating procedures that incorporate dual independent verification when accepting, loading, and updating clearances in the FMS — and ensuring the Master Operational Flight Plan and plotting chart reflect the latest changes.

Dual independent verification guards against expectation bias and confirmation bias, two cognitive tendencies that can compromise safety. It should be applied to all flights, domestic or international, where FMS data is loaded from an external source.