Delivery of oceanic clearances via datalink for the Shanwick Oceanic Control Area (OCA) is available to registered aircraft. This service is known as Oceanic Route Clearance Authorisation (ORCA) and is accessible by aircraft equipped with AEEC 623 compliant datalink units, including Honeywell's CMU Mark II, CMU Mark III, and Primus Epic? CMF (except Dassault Falcon EASy aircraft), Teledyne's TeleLinkŪ RMU, and Universal Avionics' UniLink? CMU. ORCA does not support use of variable callsigns and aircraft equipped with Honeywell's AFISŪ DMU are currently not able to access the service.
The flight crew should request the clearance via datalink between 30 and 90 minutes prior to entry into the Shanwick OCA. Please refer to the appropriate Reference Guide for instructions specific to each datalink platform. Shanwick normally responds to the clearance request with a message indicating that the clearance should be received within the next 15 minutes. Shanwick then sends the clearance to the aircraft, which contains the aircraft registration, entry point, ETA at the entry point, Mach number, flight level, route, and destination. The flight crew must promptly acknowledge the clearance via datalink by line selecting ACKNOWLEDGE on the message page containing the clearance. Failure to promptly acknowledge the clearance results in cancellation of the clearance transaction and requires that Shanwick be contacted by voice. Upon receipt of the clearance acknowledgement, Shanwick sends a message to the aircraft confirming the clearance. If this message is not received, Shanwick must be contacted by voice.
Please also note that if at any time the flight crew is in doubt regarding the oceanic clearance transaction, Shanwick must be contacted by voice using the phrase "(AIRCRAFT REGISTRATION) ORCA CONTACT". If any message from Shanwick is not terminated by the phrase "END OF MESSAGE", Shanwick must also be contacted by voice using the phrase "(AIRCRAFT REGISTRATION) ORCA CONTACT". If no clearance has been received by 15 minutes prior to entry into the Shanwick OCA, Shanwick and Air Traffic Control (ATC) for the airspace in which the aircraft is operating must be contacted by voice. All clearances and reclearances must be acknowledged.
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