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Flight levels used over Russia and China

Started by Richard McDonald Woods, Fri, 21 Oct 2011 13:19

Richard McDonald Woods

In our flight from Hong Kong to Heathrow yesterday in a Cathay Pacific B744, the seat-back flight information screens consistently displayed our altitude as, for example, 38000 feet and 11582 metres.

Should the display have shown altitude as a round number of metres and the equivalent unrounded value of feet, or have these countries converted to using feet for altitude?
Cheers, Richard

Shiv Mathur

#1
I'm guessing the units are chosen by (or rather, are default for) the operating airline/aircraft, and nothing to do with what country one is flying over.

(Aren't ATC clearances world-over for altitude given in feet ?)

Cheers, Shiv

Mundyas

Hi
Altitude, elevations and heights are usually given in feet.

But there are exceptions.

One from the book Boeing 747-400 Heathrow to Hong Kong talking to Russian ATC, my edition 2002.

First Officer RT "Good Evening , Speedbird two five at flight level three three zero."


Velikjve Control "Speedbird two five good evening, Velikiye Control. Climb to ten thousand one hundred metres. Call me Whisky Kilo Lima"

On PS1 and on the real machine you can select metric altitude (from the PS1 manual it explains )  "displays selected MCP altitude in metres when MTRS is selected on the EFIS control panel".

Andrew (5 foot 11 inches) or in metric 1.80 m

the mad hatter


John Golin

#4
John Golin.
www.simulatorsolutions.com.au

Hardy Heinlin

#5
I guess Richard asks why it displays 38000 ft / 11582 m instead of, say, 38057 ft / 11600 m since in that region the rounded target units are meters, not feet.

I assume this is because the MCP altitude bug remains on the 100 feet rounding system also if the MTRS info is added on the PFD. 11600 m was probably the ATC target and the MCP bug may have been on 38100 or 38000.

And the entertainment system rounded the feet, too.


Cheers,

|-|ardy


Hardy Heinlin


SteveShaw

Hardy is correct.
Procedurally the pilot would have set FL381 on the MCP in accordance
with the cruising tables found in Jeppesen Enroute EE201-EE215 specifically
EE212 and EE214. This would satisfy the 11600M requirement from
Russian ATC.
I assume the FMC delivers data to the inflight entertainment system
and it rounded to the nearest thousand feet for display on the PTV in
the seat.
At least until the 17NOV anyway.
http://aviadocs.net/aip/aic/aic-2010-03_eng.pdf

Richard McDonald Woods

I also noticed that occasionally the seat-back TV would momentarily display a 'NOTAM' informing the pilot of forthcoming reassignments of gates to Heathrow terminal 5, dated sometime in 2008!
Cheers, Richard

Jeroen Hoppenbrouwers

I bet this was the install date of the system and these messages got stuck    :mrgreen:

ray

#11
The official info is metric rvsm in the upper airspace.  For the airport charts, you may get amendments for the Sids/Stars as some of the altitude constraints fall in the 'upper' airspace. eg what used to be FL59 now becomes more 'normal' like FL60.  Expect heaps of amendments.

martin1006

I fly AMS HK as a passenger very frequently.

My last update is the Russians went back to feet and China still remains in meters. This update I got two weeks ago from the flightdeck on my flight from AMS to HK.

JimmyD

Got to see a World Air Routes video the other day of a Cargolux 747-400F flight from Luxembourg to Singapore. The pilot explains some of the altitude constraints in his discussion on Jeppesen route chart. I don't know if the film is dated now.

Another interesting tidbit in the film - I recall the pilot explained the use of a what he called an escape route chart which was to be used in event of a decompression or engine out when over the high peaks of the Himalayas.

The chart was labeled "Planning Chart Hong Kong"

There is a forum thread with pictures of the Escape chart at the following website.

http://www.flyafrica.info/forums/showthread.php?31064-Lima-888-Air-Route-over-China

Jim

ray

Just some technicalities here.  As of 17Nov2011, all the 'stans' including Russia went to feet abv the transition altitude.  Clearances will be given in feet.  Below the transition level, altitudes are still in meters using QFE within CTAs and QNH outside.

In China & Mongolia, the metric system still remains.  However, as this has been used for quite some time in China ... clearances are given in meters, however, the pilot looks up a corresponding cruise-level table and flies in feet.  Aircraft without the imperial feet system may not remain within RVSM bands.

IefCooreman

As a last add-on, only to complicate things a tad more (which we like to do :-))

For FL290 to FL410:

Russia used to use metric flight levels, but what was more important is that the separation used to be metric based separation band. Flight "levels" used to be 8100m, 8600m, 10100m,... so there was a 500m separation band. Since most western designed airplanes use feet, the resulting level setting used for the autopilot has to be looked up in tables and ended up in strange settings like 29900ft, 31500ft, 33100ft, 34800ft,...

China used metric flight levels as well, but separation between levels was based on feet since they were already using RVSM or 1000ft seperation between flight levels. Chinese ATC will clear you for FL8900m, FL9200m, FL9500m, FL9800m,... however for us pilots using feet that is FL291, FL301, FL311, FL321, FL331 (1000ft difference) which is a lot easier to remember and use for us.

The Russians have now implemented RVSM, and reverted to European style RVSM for the higher flight levels, hence FL290, FL300, FL310, FL320,... so no more metric based flight levels above FL290. No more conversion tables.

Mongolia has implemented RVSM as well, but use the Chinese RVSM level allocation system: FL8900m (29100ft) FL9200m (30100ft), FL9500m (31100m), FL9800m (32100m),...

No more level jumping crossing the Euro/Russian border, and only 100ft jumps when crossing Russian/Chinese border. Bottlenecks entering Russia (less flight levels available because of higher 500m separation) are now gone.

Cheerz!