Alternate Airpot

[Guest Raptor]

Hey guys,I need someone to tell me what to do if I want to go to the AlternateAirport.The Advanced Tutorial tell us to draw a circle around the airportbut how to go to it ?NEED STEPSAbraham

[Guest benhoffman]

Abe;As the Dispatcher it is my responsibility to ensure that each alternate airprot specified for the flight is legal in terms of service capability and weather.The FAR specifies several instances where no alternate need be specified due to weather forecast, or when one does not exist (such as when United flies from Los Angeles to Sydney, they usually use the FAR No Alternate reserve because of a lack of a good alternate) Now, in terms of auctually diverting, I have to admit I do not know the specific procedure as its probably safe to say it varies by carrier, but here's what I would do.With an ETOPS alternate such as Goose Bay, Honolulu, Guam or Lajes if you are on a flex track (NAT or PACOT) I would immagine you either proceed direct.With a more conventinal alternate there are specific routings from one airport to another, that is not to say these a are specifically for diversions but I know that Lufthansa, American Airlies and United specifically list the route to the alternate on the paperwork.You would load this into the RTE2 page and activate it when necessary but this would apply for an approach at destination, missed approach, subsequent approach and missed approach OR holding with only one approach flown and then diversion.Say you're flying from San Francisco to Chicago and when over Denver you get an ACARS message saying O'Hare is closed due to weather and you and the Dispatcher agree to go to Detroit, in a situation like this Dispatch would usually produce a new set of paperwork and a route.This would be uplinked via ACARS to the cockpit printer and also to the FMS which would then simply be activated as RTE1.For MSFS I'm not sure what you could do in that situation, thats why I always keep a handy supply of Jeppesen enroute charts nearby! :)Hope that helps

[Guest Raptor]

Ok thanksbut, Please give me steps to follow. Steps for the FMC.Shall I plan a new route while airborne? or how ?bye

[Guest benhoffman]

With a conventional alternate you would load the route into the RTE2 page.eg FRA-SFO in RTE1 and SFO-LAX in RTE2Then go to RTE2 and activate it.Routings to destination alternates are planned by the Dispatcher at the planning stage, its only routes to enroute alternates I immagine would be planned by Dispatch ocne the plane is in the air and uplinked to the crew.

[cowpatz 243]

Are you referring to a destination alternate or an enroute alternate?CheersSteve

[Guest Raptor]

sorry I didn't tell you that I meant to the enroute alternate..so please take care,,,,,

[cowpatz 243]

Select the RTE page and then RTE copy. This will save your current route to route 2 (just in case you need it again). Put your airfield you are diverting to in as the destination airfield. Press EXECute. Go to the legs page and enter the alternate airfield as the last waypoint. If you want to go direct to that airfield then bring the last waypoint up to the beginning of all the other waypoints so that you should just see this airfield as the only entry on the legs page. This will now give you a direct track to the alternate airfield. In the RW aircraft it is possible to have the FMC create regularly spaced Latitudes or Longitudes for ATC position reports. For example high speed aircraft usually report crossing every 5 or 10 degrees of Lat or Long. This would be done by typing in the next 5 or 10 degree of latitude followed by -5 or -10 as appropriate. Let us say you were at N20 and your diversion airfield was at 40N and you wanted to report crossing each 5 degrees of Latitude along your new track you would enter the next 5 degree lat towards the diversion airport, which would be N25 followed by -5 ( N25-5). This would create a new set of waypoints along your new track starting at N25 then N30 and N35. It automatically works out the longitude. If the diversion airfiels was more East/West than North/South then you would use Longitude instaed of Lat and the latitude would be calculated automatically. Unfortunately the PMDG sim does not reproduce this feature. You could, however, put in a whole series of waypoints starting at the alternate destination and then go /-300 (which is about 30 min apart). So if you were diverting to Narita for example you could put RJAA/-300 and put that over RJAA and then when that was in the legs page do another /-300 on that new point until you ended up with the left over distance being less than 300 miles. This will give you 300 ml spaced waypoints to check your progress as you are going toward your alternate. You could then consult your chart to perhaps pick up a published route if there is one close by. When you are looking for suitable airfields to divert to you can enter the airfield ICAO code against the where it says destination on PROG pg 1. Type in the 4 letter code and place it over where it says destination. It will change to the new code and give you a time and fuel at the diversion airfield. To get rid of it just select another page and it will automatically go back to the original destination.CheersSteve

[Guest Flightfreak]

Why not put this in de PMDG OPS Center, I think a lot of people want to know about this function, and how this actually works.Michael

[neilbradley1 2]

Brisbane and Melbourne are not good alternates?????I would like to have a supply of Jeppesen charts handy also, but how does one aquire them (apart from paying vast amounts of money). You are fortunate working in the industry in flight dispatch as you would have access to charts replaced by the latest amendment, that are still very usable in the flight sim world.NeilYPAD

[Guest Raptor]

thank you steve :)I'll try it laterthanks

[cowpatz 243]

Try looking here Neil.http://www.navdata.at/php/charts/charts.phpCheersSteve

[cowpatz 243]

Good point. I will try to find some time to write ine up. Bit busy doing some Beta testing for FSCrew for the PMDG-747.CheersSteve

[Vauban 0]

Hey Neil, have you tried looking in eBay for Jeppesen charts?

[Guest Raptor]

Select the RTE page and then RTE copy. This will save your current route to route 2 (just in case you need it again). Put your airfield you are diverting to in as the destination airfield. Press EXECute. Go to the legs page and enter the alternate airfield as the last waypoint. If you want to go direct to that airfield then bring the last waypoint up to the beginning of all the other waypoints so that you should just see this airfield as the only entry on the legs page. This will now give you a direct track to the alternate airfield.It's very wellthank you Capt. SteveBut :)when I did (Go to the legs page and enter the alternate airfield as the last waypoint. )it gives me Route Disco even If I bring the alternate airfield to the beginning of all the other waypoints.how to avoid that disco, I want to see only the alternate airfield without the old route waypoints ??????it's easy to delete the old wayponits one by one ,but what if I had 30 waypoint of the old route, shall I delete 'em one by one ??!take care,,

[Guest benhoffman]

I wish I had a full set of current Jeppesen charts, but most of my PAPER ones are old as the hills! (2004)The only 2006 charts I have are for Shanghai & Munich.Vast sums of money are generally required to obtain them, or friends in the industry. Don't have access to Jeppview but not on my home PC.As for Brisbane & Melbourne, from Sydney they are quite far and in terms of alternate planning to load SPECIFIC alternate fuel will create a significant reduction in the payload when coming from the US (UA flies from LAX & SFO to SYD)I'd be interested to see if Jon or Steve can tell us what thier airlines use as alternates for SYD.