I've never learned much about dispatching and flight planning as I only have my PPL (so dead reckoning and VOR-to-VOR basically). I have no idea how to plan cross country flights for the 744 now that I know the basics. Where can I find some company routes, or what program can I use to make them? I have heard that program PFPX is good, but it doesn't mention PSX. And what do I need to know about fuel planning, alternates, step climbs, etc- does it do that? I would love to just use some ready made medium length routes where all of that is already done so I just set the fuel, loadout, and fly it. By medium length I mean JFK or Miami to Denver- just a couple hours. I'm not ready to try transatlantic.
PFPX is brilliant and outputs directly to PSX. Better still, once you create a route in PFPX it loads all relevant navdata in the file so if the AIRACs are different to PSX (which is updated once a year) it is still a non-issue. There are some good tutorial videos...
As far as canned routes- http://www.edi-gla.co.uk/fpl/index.php
Flight Planning is a career so there is a lot to learn- but starting small as you say you want to is great- a SID, a standard route and a STAR and you're there. FlightAware can get you started with routes as well. Don't worry about matching a/c, at this stage pretend you're a freight dog and fly your toasters wherever you want to. When you get more comfortable you can plunge into NATS, PATCOTS, ETOPS and ETPs....
Best- C
Thanks! I'll buy it then. Is there any version I need to get?
The latest? ;)
If it's any help, here's a link to a review of PFPX that I wrote not long after it was published, so the program has some additional facilities, now (it can now export a route directly to PSX, for example). But the review does contain links to the purchase pages, as well as to various sources for tutorials and videos to learn how to plan your route. You can access the review here (please copy and paste the URL):
mutleyshangar.com/reviews/bc/pfpx/pfpx.htm
In fact, much of the program's complexity comes from the fact that it's fully equipped to enable you to plan an ETOPS route (OK, it's unlikely you should ever need to for a 744, but just in case), but you can ignore that complexity and quickly get to the point where you can plan a 'domestic' flight such as the ones you describe in less than ten minutes. The fuel planning is perhaps not completely accurate, but a method is provided (which is mentioned in the review) that enables you to fine-tune it for your aircraft.
Cheers,
Brian
If you are interested in learning how a flight plan is used in real life, I put together a practice flight for you from JFK to DEN in a 744F using the GE engines. The flight plan was generated by simbrief.com. It is probably not the best software, but the version I use is free, so I can't complain. Here is what a completed flight plan looks like at the end of the flight: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-WRh0Hf7VdZekhkVW5QbWRfNzg/view?usp=sharing
I used red ink for everything that is done prior to liftoff and green for airborne. The red-boxed stuff in the header is what I would generally be most interested in when handed a new flight plan. The route is via RBV, but the flight plan skips it as one of the waypoints, so I just planned to go direct to BYRDD after the SKORR 3 departure.
Different companies have different procedures, and maybe other guys want to chime in here as well. Here's how the procedure generally works in practice at my company:
Presuming there is no ACARS, the captain normally manually enters the route using the RTE page. If there is ACARS, then he would send the recall number on the flight plan and wait to uplink it. Once the route is entered and executed (one of the only times you can execute without the other guy's approval), he puts a checkmark next to each waypoint, indicating that every waypoint on the flight plan is also entered on the LEGS page.Then he checks that the total distance on the PROGS page is reasonably close to the flight plan distance (this could vary a bit depending on runway use and arrival procedure).
The FO will take the flight plan and go back to the LEGS page, making sure that each waypoint is verified. Rather than checking the actual LAT/LON, he just needs to check that the segment distance for each leg corresponds within 2 miles of the segment distance on the flight plan (you can circle the segment distance too if you want). The FO would also circle each check mark that the captain made as he checks each waypoint. He can put two slash marks over the origin airport (JFK) before departure. If there is time, go to the PLN page on the EFIS Control Panel and step through each waypoint using the STEP key at 6R. You will be looking at the ND from a north-facing perspective and it allows you to visualize the route and see if there are any obvious discrepancies. Some FOs will actually verify the waypoints while in the PLN mode to save time.
Write the OFF time on the flight plan. In the real airplane, just prior to powering up at takeoff, at least one pilot will hack the clock and you will always have a display of your OFF time. If you forget to do it in the real plane, you can go to the ACARS page and get the OFF time there, but you will still be sitting there for possibly 12 hours looking at the clock and wishing you had hacked it prior to takeoff (it's an irritating reminder for everyone to see that you forgot). Also, note the takeoff fuel and put it on the flight plan.
So, here's where the fun starts: As soon as you climb out of 10,000', the NFP has to add up all the numbers for the ETAs for every waypoint. I think my completed flight plan example should show you how to add the times. When you get down to the last waypoint on the flight plan (your destination), you need to check that you didn't make any mistakes. Add the OFF time to the ETE and it should agree with the ETA you wrote for your destination waypoint. If it doesn't, you have to erase and start over (that's why we always do this with a pencil). Getting this done quickly while doing the NFP duties is a challenge, especially when you are departing an airport close to an oceanic gateway (Prestwick, Gander) and they want an accurate ETA for that coast-out point as soon as possible before they will give you an oceanic clearance. It gets challenging because you are doing other things while trying to add the numbers (talking to ATC, nav accuracy checks, preparing for a position report or at least an HF SELCAL check telling them you are CPDLC, etc.).
For practice purposes, we will just assume that once airborne, Kennedy Departure will clear us direct to BYRDD. You can go direct to BYRDD on the LEGS page and if it looks reasonable, put one slash mark over BYRDD on the flight plan.
As you are approaching BYRDD, this is where you would use the LEGS page to check the course and distance to your next waypoint (SAAME in this case). Look at the course and distance to SAAME on the flight plan and compare it to the course and distance on the LEGS page. (If this waypoint was an oceanic waypoint like N47W040, I would also check the LAT/LON for this by bringing it down to the scratchpad. If it was an oceanic waypoint that had a name, like DOGAL, bring it down to the s/p then select INIT REF, INDEX, NAV DATA, IDENT. The LAT/LON will be displayed.) Once the course and distance to SAAME is verified, you would put one slash through SAAME. When you cross over BYRDD, you put the second slash through BYRDD, write down the ATA and fuel on board at BYRDD.
Then, you start a time/fuel score off to the right side of the flight plan. Compare your ETA with your ATA for BYRDD. In my sample, we are ahead by 3 minutes, so you put +3. Compare the estimated fuel remaining with the actual fuel. In my sample we are 5,200 lbs ahead so we put +5.2. So you end up with +3/+5.2. Continue to do this for each waypoint that you approach and cross. Now that you have your first time score, if you are asked by ATC what your ETA is for a waypoint further down the road, you can refer to the ETA on the flight plan and then adjust for being ahead or behind.
Remember, approaching a waypoint you will only have one slash through it. You would then check the course and distance to the waypoint after that and put one slash through that one too. Then, when you cross the waypoint in front of you, put a second slash through it, note the time and fuel, then do the time/fuel score. The second slash only goes through a waypoint when you've crossed over it. The first slash means that you have verified the waypoint.
I made a copy of the blank flight plan and a situ that starts out at the end of 31L with everything ready to go, so you can practice running the flight plan as many times as you want. Start adding the numbers as soon as you get out of 10,000 and see if you can finish by the time you get to BYRDD.
Blank Flight Plan: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-WRh0Hf7VdZamxORzlBSUtPUjQ/view?usp=sharing
Situ: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-WRh0Hf7VdZVWItaWdub0hmWnM/view?usp=sharing
Cheers,
Jon D.
Jon,
thanks very much for going to the trouble to put this together - particularly given your `real-world' flying commitments. Similarly to the huge contributions made by Britjet and others at this site, anything I can reference/copy to bring my operations closer to the way the 744 is actually operated is very much appreciated.
I will get stuck into this flight the next time I have a few hours to spare.
cheers
Scud.
Thanks, Scud. I noticed that in the sim world, when flight planning is discussed, more emphasis seems to be placed on the software that generates the flight plan and its ability to uplink it with only a few button pushes. While this is definitely nice to have, it's not always available in the real world, so resort to manually entering the route on the RTE page is required. I have seen very little discussion on how to actually make use of the computer flight plan as a work-in-progress, so I hope this helps in this area.
wow nice data, but why has the flight plan no weather, sid or star charts? or isnit that included in the flight plan (the pilot has a map on the plane for that data?)
There was weather in the FP, but I cut it out in my example because it wasn't relevant to what I was trying to explain. Even if it is in the FP, the FP is usually a few hours old by the time they deliver it up to the airplane, so you would need to get the new weather within one hour prior to departure anyway.
I haven't figured out how to get the SID or STAR to appear in the FP route using Simbrief. Maybe that feature is available, maybe not, but it's not that important because much of the time the runway used in the FP will not be the same runway you're going to get for takeoff. This is where (God forbid) you have to go to the RTE, DEP/ARR or LEGS page and manually make the changes.
From my experience, the actual charts are never part of the real-world flight plan, unless you're going to some airport that doesn't exisit, somewhere in Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. The SIDS and STARS are found in actual physical Jepp books or on computer tablets (ipads in our case).
Jon, your explanations above are really quite helpful. I flew in the commuter world for a while, and we had our own challenges, but managing tine, fuel, and waypoints on a 12-hour flight wasn't one of them.
Hi, Will.
I flew commuter planes (SHD-6, CV-580) in the late eighties. That was before the RJ era. The five legs per day without A/P were challenging, but it was a different type of challenge. I think I like the five legs over the 12-hour flights from EWR to BAH (with a Part 91 ferry to DWC afterwards). That gets old when you commercial into it from the west coast and you are already up for 14 hours before you even show for the trip.
Jon
Jon, thanks so much for your insightful posts. It surely helps to those of us who have never flown in the commercial world to better understand the complexity of real world flight ops.
I use PFPX instead of Simbrief. I use an Atlas OFP template someone uploaded when I get to "vly" (as Brian says) good ol' N418MC.
Have you used TOPCAT for your virtual flights? Have you tried using your carrier's FPPM and compared the results to what you obtain in PSX?.
Back to your real world flight ops: How often does it happen that you need to make use of the manuals instead of your on-board performance software tool to perform these calculations? From what I understand, this seldom happens these days, right?.
Thanks in advance for your answers!
Cheers from MMMX
-E
QuoteThe five legs per day without A/P were challenging
Jon, our biggest day was 9 legs! KSTL-KSPI, shuttling back and forth. No autopilot. In the mighty J32.
Many thanks for that post Jon !
I think it would deserve a sticky in the tutorial forum.
That type of real world "how is it done" is always very helpful, but hard to find.
Charles
Done. This thread is now in the Tutorials section.
|-|
:)
Hi, Evaamo. I never tried to compare the two flight plans. The flight plan the company gives us has to go in the envelope after the flight and gets sent back to headquarters where the feds occasionally audit them for mistakes and look for ways to hang us if we did something that was questionable. I've flown with guys who are afraid to even circle, highlight, or underline the weather or NOTAMS because they think it may somehow make it easier for the feds to find a mistake when they audit it later. I kind of like the way Southwest Airlines did it -- very little written down during flight other than the logbook and the ATIS, which was written on a napkin that went into the trash at the end of the flight -- No paper trail. I don't ever recall having to break out the on-board manuals for flight planning.
Will -- Nine legs between STL and SPI must have been challenging, especially when there was weather!
My personal record, and it is probably a world record for that leg, is 18 minutes from OFF to ON. The round trip was booked for 45 minutes. St. Louis was the home base, so we had weather all the time: tornadoes in the spring and summer, ice in the winter. You know the drill. The Mighty J32 was a great airplane though. Not very pretty, but sturdy.
We never turned in our flight planning paperwork after a flight. I wonder if that's an international thing? We were Part 121, for what that's worth, but anything that was going to be preserved was handed to the ground crew before departure. What we took with us on the flight was tossed after landing.
Quote from: Will on Sun, 24 Jul 2016 05:34
I flew in the commuter world for a while, and we had our own challenges, but managing tine, fuel, and waypoints on a 12-hour flight wasn't one of them.
If I recall, the biggest challenge was living on $12,500 a year. I lived on popcorn, baked potatoes and peanut butter sandwiches while I did it. I hear that's changing now. Guys leaving the regionals are given up to a year to return at their existing seniority and pay. They must really be getting short of pilots there. Couldn't happen to a better industry.
I did okay. I flew sightseeing tours at the Grand Canyon for a year and a half, for $10,000 per year, no benefits, no health insurance. Then I started as F/O at the commuter for $17,000. It was the 1990's and the economy was booming and the airline was expanding, so I made Captain after a year, pulling down $35,000 or so. Then after a year in the left seat, I went into the training department (which is one reason I followed your conversation with interest, in which you contrasted your experience with Peter, where the training environment was more nurturing that challenging).
As a training captain, I could pull the salary of any seat I could bid, which happened to be in an aircraft much larger than the J32 I taught in. So I flew a small plane but got paid big plane wages. There were other perks too, such as being able to "management bump" any pilot, in any seat, whenever I wanted, and take their flight. So when I needed to get line hours, I could pick the route, the day, and the time. I always picked the last leg of a trip, so that the regular crew member could end his trip early and enjoy a longer weekend at home. (They got paid for management bumps, so it didn't cost them anything.) Plus, it was a good way to fly with friends.
On the whole, I did okay. Aviation was good to me.
But at the end of the day I started to feel the itch to do something different. So in 1999 I hung up my wings and went back to school. I loved flying, but I was happy to give up my seat for someone who loves flying more than me.
Interesting. I knew a guy who went to fly in the Grand Canyon doing tours in the early nineties.
I was struck by the green-grass syndrome too and went back to school in 1996. When I finished I realized the other profession wasn't as "green" as I thought. Plus, most of the people I ran into just wanted to talk about airplanes.
No need to be specific, but I may know the guy you knew, because it was a small community. All the action was out of Grand Canyon Airport, which was in Tusayan, AZ, which only had about 3000 residents. A few million tourists per year, but only a few thousand residents. I lumped them up into three groups: locals (mostly Navajo, but not always), pilots, and people who were running from something. Go to the (only) bar for a drink, and you would be likely to find yourself sitting next to a 22-year-old C-206 pilot with 650 hours, a Navajo who had grown up in the desert, and a guy who came to Tusayan because he had warrants for his arrest for spouse abuse and DUI. It was a fascinating subculture.
I actually ran into a guy who went there because he had fled a cult, and written a book about the cult, and then was being hounded by the media for interviews. He felt that the Grand Canyon was one place where the media wouldn't find him. He gave me a copy of his book. He asked many questions about airplanes, and I think was happy to talk about anything except the cult.
Bending the topic a bit towards the other side.
One of our SATCOM customers is UAL, which runs a heavily centralized dispatch operation. They dispatch everything from Chicago, from a huge center with a large number of dispatchers. Even the remote Pacific atoll flights such as UAL154 and UAL155 (Guam-Honolulu via Chuuk, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Kwajalein and Majoro -- and back) are dispatched from Chicago in real-time.
Real-time means that the paperwork starts streaming in while you are on approach to a one-hour stopover. Your flight deck printer starts spitting out about 12 feet of paper, which is fed from Chicago to the aircraft via ACARS. On those remote islands and atolls, this means via Iridium SATCOM (thus "via me"). I can get about one 220-byte block through in 10 seconds, with another 10 to ack it back to base. A flight plan is about 40 blocks worth of printable data. Add the loadable FMS route, dangerous goods manifest, crew stuff, takeoff data, landing data, final weights . . . and you see how hard the datalink equipment has to pump to get everything ready for safe and legal takeoff.
In this way, they have added a very convenient but fragile paperwork pipe to an already fragile operation, where they burn one crew on Guam-Majuro (about 11 hours) and the next on Majuro-Honolulu (about 5 hours). All potential to time out or break the airplane and you're stuck, and a "rescue" aircraft needs to be dispatched (typically from Guam) to continue your mission.
These guys and gals pull this one off three times a week, and with great success. Hats off to everybody who makes it happen. I feel privileged to bring the pipe.
Hoppie
Two aircraft regularly scheduled for this Island Hopper (next to other Guam missions):
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N37293
https://flightaware.com/live/flight/N77296
If you want to start flight planning . . . (mind the runway length!):
https://flightaware.com/live/airport/PTSA
PS. Green grass ... hmm yes. I know the feeling.
QuoteYour flight deck printer starts spitting out about 12 feet of paper
How large is the paper? All the flight planning software I've seen, which isn't much (and may in fact be limited to just PFPX), seems to be based on 8.5 x 11 paper or thereabouts. But the printer in PSX seems to use a 6" wide roll? And who checks the quantity of paper and ink before the flight departs? Does your SATCOM system use a Boeing printer or an Iridium printer?
I just moved this discussion back to the "Hangar 7" section and posted a copy of the actual tutorial text in the Tutorials section: http://aerowinx.com/board/index.php?topic=3745.0
|-|ardy
Quote from: Will on Sun, 31 Jul 2016 23:31
QuoteYour flight deck printer starts spitting out about 12 feet of paper
How large is the paper? All the flight planning software I've seen, which isn't much (and may in fact be limited to just PFPX), seems to be based on 8.5 x 11 paper or thereabouts. But the printer in PSX seems to use a 6" wide roll? And who checks the quantity of paper and ink before the flight departs? Does your SATCOM system use a Boeing printer or an Iridium printer?
Some messages seem designed for a narrow 2" cash register roll, others are for a wider model printer, 6" seems about right. Obviously all UAL aircraft have the wider model now but it is not a letter sheet printer. It is plain thermo paper, so you only need a few rolls of paper aboard and no toner/ink. It definitely is part of the preflight checks. The SATCOM system has no clue about the printer at all. Everything goes first to the Communications Management Unit CMU, the central message router, which connects to three radios (VHF, SATCOM, HF) and a few aircraft avionics boxes (FMS, its own internal ACARS AOC, the printer, and the DFDAU).
Narrow message (sample extracts only, they run really long):
** PART 01 OF 01 **
************************
T/O MAJ 07
7913 FT
737-800 CFM56-7B26
TEMP 29C ALT 29.88
WIND 090/10 MAG
9KT HW 4KT XW
TOCG/TRIM 24.5/-.--
************************
DRY
************************
*FLAPS 5*
*BLEEDS ON*
*ANTI-ICE OFF*
ASSMD WT. 151.4
ASSMD TMP. 47C
************************
Wide message:
** PART 01 OF 02 **
UAL154 OPERATIONAL FLIGHTPLAN PG 1/3 PRTD 18JUL16 2333.50
UAL154-18 19JUL16 PKWA/KWA OUT 0059Z/1259L OFF 0112Z/1312L
N37293/3293 B738 PTSA/KSA ON 0206Z/1206L IN 0212Z/1212L
WIND 190000 190600 01.02/00.08L VRNT 1 RTNG 01 RLSE 01
RLSD IFR TO PTSA/KSA CH58
COLDEST ENRT TAT M5C (---) (N0705.5 E16524.2) 0.26/176NM
IA.PKWA-PTSA
FLIGHT IS NOT ENROUTE TERRAIN LIMITED
ACF90.09/ACF99.15 SAMPLE.189 AVGBDE.00 STDEV.04
ROUTING
DIST 400 WC T9 DRAG/FF 0/+5.5 FECO +119 USD/1K
CI 35 USER F300
FMS INIT LOAD TOW PARAMETERS
PKWA/PTSA R06 T30 A2991 W070/12 HW12 XW01
ARPT REF POINT N0843.2 E16743.9 F25 DRY AI/ANTI-ICE OFF
F300/M31 (P13) TROP F504 AC/BLEEDS ON L6668
TOC NDJ+77NM LW PARAMETERS
ZFW 118900/132729L R05 T29 A2985 W050/10 HW10 XW01
TOW 138913/152743L F40 DRY AI/E AC/ON ENRT ICE
LW 132471/146300S ACCR L5751
NO REDISPATCH POINT
INTENDED DEST
PTSA/KSA 01.02 6442
Hoppie