WEEK 16: FLIGHT PLANNING #17

Airline Prep

Flying's easy with directions

I have just finished a long week of flight planning. It's amazing how a week feels so much longer without a CBT day, I'm very glad it's the weekend now, even though it will be spent revising. Just not having to go into the center for a couple of days will be nice.

A high level chart. These are all possible airways to fly in the South of England region. Terrifying!

There was a lot to take in for flight planning (as always), lots of charts, tables and graphs. A majority of the questions revolve around working out the fuel required depending on the weight and distance. And then you have to compensate for the altitude and temperature deviation with or without an engine failure which will affect the drag and efficiency of the engine so will affect the fuel flow and so on... all very complicated. There is a different graph or table for each scenario so you just need to flick to the right page and interpret it correctly. 

A typical table from the CAP

A typical graph from the CAP

Having to work out routes from A to B on various charts or calculating the lowest/highest allowable altitude to fly and reading the particular airports SID (standard instrument departure) or STAR (standard instrument arrival) is another of the many sections. I enjoy that bit of it because it is real practical stuff that we are going to be doing during our training and on the line on a day to day basis. It's not always easy because the charts can get quite congested but it is quite fun.

The Heathrow to Munich flight plan DJ & I filled in

Towards the end of the week we had to plan a couple of routes and fill out a flight plan for Heathrow to Munich and Stansted to Biarritz using the charts in our Jepessen's and all of the skills we had learned. We had to find the correct airways, measure the distance and calculate the time and the fuel required, including reserves and allowance for the wind. Both times my desk partner and I were very successful but it took quite a long time and a lot of faffing. I really enjoyed those tasks though.

A Heathrow STAR (standard instrument arrival)

Like all the subjects it isn't easy but after practice should become manageable.

A lot of the class have been suffering from a stinking cold over the last couple of weeks, including both my housemates. I have been pumping myself full of vitamins which is working so far so hopefully I can continue to avoid it, although with both Luke and DJ suffering it can only be a matter of time until I come down with it too. Immune system don't fail me now!