NAT Changes 2025: No More Blue Spruce Routes

Once (or sometimes twice) every year, ICAO update their NAT Doc 007 – the main guidance doc for ops over the North Atlantic. All the specifics about how to operate your aircraft safely through the complex airspace of the region are here.

There’s a new one that has just been published for March 2025, which contains a few important changes to know about if you’re planning a flight across the NAT.

You can download the new NAT Doc 007 on the ICAO page, but here’s a summary of the main changes…

Deletion of Blue Spruce Routes

If you’re new to the NAT, the Blue Spruce Routes have been around since forever. These are special routes that go via Greenland and Iceland, designed to help aircraft with limited navigation capabilities.

The Blue Spruce Routes will be officially deleted in March 2025. The team behind this (the Blue Spruce Routes Project Team) has decided the following:

There aren’t enough ground-based navigation aids anymore to reliably support these routes.
Hardly anyone uses them, as very few aircraft with single LRNS rely on them.
The Iceland-Greenland surveillance corridor is a good enough alternative for aircraft with navigation issues.
The difference in flight distance between Blue Spruce Routes and alternative corridors is so small it’s not worth keeping them.

So from March 20, the Iceland-Greenland corridor will replace Blue Spruce Routes as the backup option. A review is also underway to decide whether to keep or remove remaining ground-based navigation aids.

When that happens, aircraft with only 1 x LRNS will have to cross the NAT via this corridor (they’ll need ADS-B too for the bit over Greenland).

The new NAT Doc has this table showing where you can go on the NAT, depending on what equipment you’ve got (a bit like our own NAT Circle of Entry):

So, “NAT CORRIDORS” is the one we’re interested in here. That refers to this bit of airspace:

Problem is, it doesn’t really say how to get in and out of these red chunks for a full NAT crossing if you’ve only got 1 x LRNS. We have to assume that these aircraft will have to go via the far north on the Canada side (ie. where the northerly Blue Spruce routes currently are), and then avoid the EGGX/Shanwick FIR on the UK side.

One other useful thing for this – although not in the NAT Doc, Iceland has published a map in their AIP which gives a good idea of where there is surveillance coverage in this region.

Click for hi-res PDF.

Updated NAT Doc 007

Here’s some of the other stuff in the newly updated version of this, effective 20 March 2025:

Deleted sections, New sections, and Chapter Switcheroos

Deleted sections:

Chapter 12 on Guarding Against Common Errors
Chapter 13 on The Prevention Of Lateral Deviations From Track

New sections:

Chapter 10 on Special Procedures For In-Flight Contingencies now includes a section to help crews handle space weather contingencies (explains how to manage impacts on communications, navigation, and surveillance systems caused by solar activity) and GNSS interference events (guidance on what to do in case of GPS jamming or spoofing, based on lessons from recent incidents).

Chapter Switcheroos:

Not that interesting. Same content just in different places now. Over to ChatGPT for a summary of this one:

Monitoring of Aircraft Systems & Flight Crew Performance moved to the end of the document and renumbered as Chapter 13.
Navigation System Failure Procedures is now Chapter 9 (was Chapter 10).
In-Flight Contingencies Procedures is now Chapter 10 (was Chapter 11) and includes the new space weather and GNSS interference guidance.
Dispatchers’ Guidance is now Chapter 11 (was Chapter 14).
Flight Operations Below NAT HLA is now Chapter 12 (was Chapter 15).

GOTA

The airspace boundaries for GOTA have been corrected slightly.

Continued confusion about the Removal of Oceanic Clearances

The new version of the NAT Doc 007 tries to consolidate all the changes made after the March 2024 roll-out of OCR procedures. The only problem is that it now says that “No oceanic clearance is required” without pointing out that this doesn’t yet apply to Shanwick!

Everything about the Removal of Oceanic Clearances so far has been quite confusing for crews. What is happening, when it’s happening, what is changing, the constant implementation date changes, plus the fact that there has been a bunch of confusing documentation out there with incorrect dates and procedures that are not yet in place.

Here’s the lowdown! Reykjavik and Santa Maria made the change in March 2024, and Gander and Bodo followed in Dec 2024. So that now leaves Shanwick as the only NAT ANSP still to make the change – and the main news at the moment is that Shanwick does not expect to implement the removal of Oceanic Clearances before summer 2025.

So until then, westbound flights entering Shanwick from domestic airspace will continue to be the only flights on the NAT that will still require an Oceanic Clearance. For more info on all this, OPSGROUP members should check this post in their Dashboard.

Other important NAT stuff to know about / look forward to

Formidable Shield military exercise expected in May 2025

Remember that big NAT military exercise a couple of years ago? Formidable Shield is happening again this year, some time in May, which will mean large parts of North Atlantic airspace will be closed to all flights for several hours at a time. Word on the street is that this year will be a particularly bad vintage, with an even bigger chunk of the NAT closed – potentially covering most of the Shanwick FIR this time.

Changes to Greenland NAT alternates

BGGH/Nuuk airport’s brand new runway (7200’/2200m) opened in Nov 2024, with ILS at both ends, making Nuuk a much more viable diversion option for NAT traffic. A couple of things to be aware of though: ATC may delay your arrival and put you into a hold as only one ILS approach can be handled at a time, and in practical terms the airport is effectively closed overnight.

Also watch out for changes potentially coming at BGSF/Sondrestrom, where they’re considering downgrading ATC to AFIS at the end of 2025. More info here.

Did we miss anything?

If you spotted anything important in the new NAT Doc 007 which we missed in this summary, please let us know! Email us at news@ops.group

More help with North Atlantic ops

Download the OPSGROUP NAT Guide (“My First North Atlantic Flight is Tomorrow”)
Download the OPSGROUP NAT Plotting & Planning Chart
Explanation of what you need to know about the NAT Datalink Mandate
An overview of NAT Emergency Divert Airports

NAT Changes 2025: No More Blue Spruce Routes