Instead of the former GAFOR forecast, as of May 20, 2021 at 02:00 UTC, Croatia Control (CCL) has started issuing eGAFOR, a new weather forecast product for general aviation routes.
Low-Level Flying (LLF) is the most critical part of aviation in terms of safety that is particularly vulnerable to all hazardous meteorological phenomena. Since meteorological support for low-level flying had been very fragmented and inconsistent in Europe, the idea of the project was based on the cooperation among MET service providers in Central and Southeast Europe. Its ultimate goal was to provide the LLF users with a consolidated and harmonized MET service for flights planned over several states.
The project covers a large area of eight countries that includes GAFOR routes for which GAFOR forecasts will be issued in a consolidated way in Zagreb FIR, Belgrade FIR, Bratislava FIR, Bucharest FIR, Budapest FIR, Ljubljana FIR, and Sarajevo FIR.
The originator of the project is CCL, with the following MET service providers participating: BHANSA (Bosnia and Herzegovina Air Navigation Services Agency), ARSO (Slovenian Environment Agency), SMATSA (Serbia and Montenegro Air Traffic Services), OMSZ (Hungarian Meteorological Service), ROMATSA (Romanian Air Traffic services Administration), and SHMU (Slovak Hydrometeorological Institute). IBL Software Engineering participates as an industry partner.
The project was recognized by the Innovation and Networks Executive Agency (INEA), and 85% of its costs were co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.
More information on the weather forecast is available at https://met.crocontrol.hr/hr/web/guest/egafor/about-egafor
