These are the daily transatlantic tracks or trans-pacific tracks that jet airliners use to cross the opened waters. These tracks are published jointly real time by FAA and other aviation authorities. These are dynamic routes that can be changed from day to day.
Data from these tracks are part of commercial flights’ flight plans.
As these tracks are the busiest air corridors in the world, it would be interesting if we can have professional airline pilots who fly these oceanic routes to share their experiences with the rest of us.
Boring is about right. The scenery generally sucks, except over Greenland on the two days a year you can see the ground, then it’s spectacular. I’m not sure about the NAT being the busiest air corridors in the world, I would buy them being the busiest overwater routes though. The tracks are not used just by commercial airlines either, we all use them.
The GO pilots fiasco is a different ball game. They were on, what, a one hour inter-island hop that happened to have a lot of water in the vicinity. I don’t think it counts the same way as a BOS-LHR or LAX-HNL flight.
Flying over the Atlantic, as passengers in the cabin, is boring. However, it is a whole different ball game in the cockpit when comparing to flying over land. I feel there are many things that we can discuss under this topic.
Comedic relief, ok, sorry been a long day.
About the only thing exciting that happens (hopefully) on an Atlantic crossing is making a position report every 45-50 minutes.
I’m not saying crossing the ocean, whether in the cockpit of an airplane or a sailboat isn’t interesting. On a good day it’s boring though. Sure, there are things to learn and do that are a bit different than a normal over land trip, but once you’ve done it a couple of times it gets real routine.
If you want to ask questions, go right ahead. If you can get a copy of the Jeppesen Atlantic planning chart it is full of information, great place to start.
I don’t happen to have one at the house though, so go easy on the questions!
See, just proves my point. They had no problems while they were over the water, it was only when they approached the crinkly, hard edges of the map that their pucker factor increased! http://www.z4-forum.com/forum/images/smilies/3.gif
True, but most of the guys flying the transatlantic and transpacific routes get payed good money. In the end, most of them will take money over getting nice scenary. And plus you usually are flying between two big cities. I mean, who enjoys the daily trip to Chattanooga? I would rather go to London or Paris.
I am here to tell you. When everything goes as planned an ocean crossing is dull as dishwater. With the advent of ACARS and CPDLC you might not even have to talk on the radio. Why are they dull? Because a ton of planning went into the pre flight preparations. All the what ifs were thought of and contingencies were hashed out long before we ever closed the door. The actual crossing should be a no brainer if the planning was done right.
