The same basic procedure in 3.1 above should be followed. However, the administering Member State is determined according to the greatest attributed emissions in the first year of operation which may not be immediately clear and may not be established definitively until the operator is included in a revised list published by the Commission. As such, the operator cannot submit a monitoring plan for approval to its administering Member State.

In such circumstances, the operator is required to determine its emissions with retrospective effect for the time it falls under the scope of EU ETS. For the period when it has not been attributed to an administering Member State, the operator can determine its emissions according to the approach in section 5 of Annex XIV of the Monitoring Decision to fill "data gaps". This allows an operator to determine its emissions which are missing for reasons beyond its control by a simplified method.

Where the administering Member State is clear from the nature of the operator's flight activity, operators can submit monitoring plans on an informal basis to the administering Member State before formal inclusion on a revised list of operators published the Commission.