How Does Cathay Pacific Do It

[Les Parson 99]

Thanks

Interesting.

 

LPD1949 asked about fuel. Total Fuel was 326423lb  Inclusive of ETOPS and reserve a bit low of 6045lb. ALT is VMMC. No Chance. Got to land.

 

Bill

Wow! Those are eye-popping numbers. 300+ on departure is huge and looks like w/o Re-Dispatch. On the arrival side, That's emergency fuel if by "reserve" you mean total remaining at FOD (Fuel Over Destination). 6045 would be more like a B737 VFR, w/o Alternate.

Yes! My wife works for UA, and we checked in the intranet the seating on this one. For UA 117 they use the two class configuration 772 ex-con. However, the three class 772 legacy (United) have more seats.

The ex-cons are newer and have the superior engines - GE90's vs. UA Pratts.

[G MIDY 101]

Greetings,

 

I worked for Continental (later UAL) many years and was familiar with our KEWR-VHHH B777-200ER operation. We were seldom weight restricted and if I recall correctly, operated the B772 with about 285 paxs. These segments require pure Great-Circle routes to the extent possible to insure mission completion, thereby avoiding very costly fuel stops. The majority of our flights were (and I'm sure still are) north over the Hudson Bay are, then northwest bound, north of PANC and onto the Polar Track System and into Russian airspace.

 

Another factor is the international "Re-Dispatch" or "Re-Release" procedure to reduce ICAO Flag Reserve Fuel requirements. Since I only fly GA in the FSX world, I don't know if you guys use these real-world procedures in the FSX Heavy Iron world. In short, it gets much more complicated than what I've described here.

 

The latest sanctions threatened by Russia will certainly damage US carriers using this route although whether it will be extended beyond the European carriers is to be seen. It's quite interesting how or even whether flights from the Eastern US will be possible to Asia should the sanctions include US carriers. At the moment there is already a food ban but a ban on US carriers in this proposed sanction is so far seemingly absent.

 

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/siberia-flight-ban-threat-sanctions-dobrolyot

 

Cathay will not be affected as they are not based in a country being sanctioned but I imagine as a hypothetical scenario any airline using the mentioned northern route will have quite considerable performance implications added if they cannot route through Russia. KJFK-VHHH is ~7000nm and this great circle route involves flying over a significant portion of Russia. Playing around in FSC I found that routing across Canada and via Alaska to Japan/South Korea adds at least 600nm to the route point to point, it is probably more. I'm not aware of the prevailing winds over the Northern Pacific and Bering Strait area but I don't envy the flight planners and loadmasters should the sanctions go ahead and include the US.

[Les Parson 99]

Those are some very good points regarding the US-EU-Russian sanctions. I was reading the same in WSJ just this morning. I moved out of the International Dispatch end of the business and into the airline  ATC world about the time of the negotiations with the Russians to utilize their airspace. Prior to that time, we often used the R20  airway just south of the Russian FIRs. I don't recall what the delta difference is between use of Russian FIR's vs. the more southern NOPAC structure. I could find out if anybody is interested. I do recall the very severe impact of Solar Flares as it relates to HF radio reliability. This phenomena required very costly fuel stops in KSFO or KSEA. The myth that the "shortest distance.between two points"  is nonsense when dealing with real-world, very long-range missions.

[ybarshavit 0]

The myth that the "shortest distance.between two points" is nonsense when dealing with real-world, very long-range missions.

Not really. Once you have everything included in the flight plan, it's still the shortest distance between the two points. I have a good friend that worked in network planning, and I will suit with him and discuss this route. Real world or not, I know for a fact that what the airline it's concerned about is flight time and fuel consumption since this is going to reflect on the route profitability overall and flight profitability.

[Les Parson 99]

I guess you don't consider ESAD. In any case, I'm going back to my Cessna 210.

 

 

Have a nice day.

[scandinavian13 5,192]

 

 

Real world or not, I know for a fact that what the airline it's concerned about is flight time and fuel consumption since this is going to reflect on the route profitability overall and flight profitability.

 

I think his point was more that shortest distance might actually take longer due to wind en route.

 

EDIT:

I guess you don't consider ESAD. In any case, I'm going back to my Cessna 210.

 

I was right.

[Driverab330 74]

Most of the JFK-HKG goes via polar routes with average distance around 7500nm. Fuel load from JFK usually sits around 135-140Tons using VMMC as ALTN with ZFW limits to about average 215Tons. And most of the time coming out of JFK with Max Take off weight. Given the tank capacity of 145.5 Tons they can even be able to carry an extra hour of holding fuel if required by kicking some cargo off. With the empty weight of the airplane in average about 170tons, it can still carry a good 40tons of payload doing the trip.

 

 

Break down of the a Fuel required

Taxi 0.5 ton

Trip ~125Tons

Contingency ~3 tons

ALTN 3 tons ( VMMC )

Reserve 3 tons.

 

Without ATC delay and arrival holding, the FOB when the airplane arrives at the gate is around 7tons.

 

One of the examples of the polar route ( over Russia, Mongolia and China ):

 

ABERI B934 UNILA B934 LUMIG B155 TUNIR A45 USONA G490 SERNA A310 POLHO G218 TMR B458 KR B458 WXI A461 LKO A461 LIG R473 WYN W18 NLG W23 ZUH R473 SIERA

 

From JFK to waypoint ABERI (polar gateway) it is flex routing, and depends solely on wind. There are several others polar gateways some of them are closer to Europe and some of them are on the Alaska side.

 

Due to the hefty overfly charges of using polar route and it is slot limited, I was told the polar route must generate a fuel saving of at least 9tons before it can be selected as the route to fly, so at times when the head wind is not so strong, some of the flights would be routed through north Alaska over the Fairbanks area, then head west into Russia.

 

There are numerous combinations for polar routes and every flight is different, however the average fuel burn is about the same.