Your favorite short routes

[warbirds 555]

Got the Queen and would like to find some great short (under 3 hours) routes. If you have a favorite route for your Boeing it might be just what I am looking for. I am hoping to find the route with complete info to input into the FMC. 

[johnnycrockett 43]

I believe back in the day Qantas used to do Sydney - Melbourne, Sydney - Brisbane, Melbourne - Brisbane.

[mtrainer 136]

The Hawaiian Island chain is fun, I once had all the FMC waypoints programmed in but I find it enjoyable to simply do old fashioned VOR to VOR station navigation along the islands.  It's scenic too.  I stay under 15K feet in both the  737 and 747 as I hop from one major airport to the next.  Not realistic routes for the 737/747, but lots of hand flying w/ plenty of takeoffs and landings!

 

Mark

[Patco Lch 1,465]

Go to Flight Aware.com, and under private tail number look up N475MC, and N465MC, both belonging to Atlas. One is a freighter and the other a charter. All kinds of short hops for the 747.

[RichieFly 728]

I like Nice, Fr (LFMN) to Manchester, UK (EGCC). I get to over-fly the Alps and usually find instrument conditions in Manchester.

[Sartanius 399]

Not exactly a favorite, but Singapore Airlines Cargo performs flight 7952 from Seattle (KSEA) to Fort Worth (KDFW) [3 hrs, 4 min].  Here's the Flight Plan:

 

KSEA SUMMA9 SUMMA J54 BKE DNJ J20 OCS J52 FQF J20 LAA J168 SPS UKW4 KDFW

 

Note: you can find many real life flight plans on FlightAware.com.  You can do live tracking by aircraft type and see all the flights by a specific airframe type (e.g., B744).  For many of those flights (especially US domestic), the flight plan will also be listed.

[Matthew Kane 1,343]

Air New Zealand from Auckland to Sydney is just over 3 hours and just under 3 hours from Sydney to Auckland. It was a common route for the 747-400 in its day

[fluffyflops 1,858]

CargoLogicAir.

 

frankfurt to Heathrow

 

Frankfurt to moscow

 

Frankfurt to Helsinki

 

And reverse.

 

I have a mate working there, the 400 will be doing a lot of sectors in mid to end Feb as above. The 800 has picked up a charter fra to tls to bcn to pen to Avalon to sin to hk to svo.

 

The new 3rd aircraft (erf) is currently being refitted in arizona and will come online mid to end of March

 

Pm me for details

[Chock 17,769]

One of my favourite routes for many airliners in FS, and especially in recent weeks the PMDG 747-400D short range high density variant, is EGCC (Manchester Airport, Northern England UK) to LEAM (Almeria Airport, Andalusia, Southern Spain).

The route is easily programmed on Simbrief, default FS planner or whatever, although I tend to use either Electronic Flight Bag or Pro ATC X, to end up with something like this:

TABLY HON58 SANBA N859 HON UL612 COWLY UT71 VAPID UN859 BALAN UL152 MAKOX UN860 RESTU B46 TOSGA G53 RISPO D358S D022Q NIDON D029N D039L RIXAL

 

Although if you wanna be lazy and just bang in a couple of points, the nearby Almeria VORs are YES and AMR and the ones near Manchester are TNT and MCT.

Manchester Airport data, IFR charts etc: https://skyvector.com/airport/EGCC/Manchester-International-Airport

Almeria Airport data, IFR charts etc: https://skyvector.com/airport/LEAM/Almeria-Airport

European High Altitude chart with NOTAMS, weather radar overlay, terrain clearance etc: https://skyvector.com/?ll=36.843936111,-2.370094444&chart=302&zoom=3

Since European winds are typically westerly off the Atlantic, most landings and departures are on runways facing west, so you'll most likely depart west off 23R or 23L at Manchester via a suitable SID (they are all in the 747's FMC), although Ironically they were departing East this morning at 7am when I was off out to work. There are no terrain issues for departing Manchester, since it's all at about 250 feet above sea level and the only hills of any consequence are the Peak District/Pennines well to the south, which despite the name, does not have that many sharp peaks and is only 2,087 feet at its highest point (Kinder Scout), although the area was notorious for causing many CFIT crashes for warplanes returning from raids or on training flights during and after WW2 (there are wrecks of B17s, B-24s, B-29s, Lancasters, DC-3s, P51s, F-86 Sabers etc up there). Worth bearing in mind if you do the return flight though, although ATC keep you at 3,000 feet and above if you are coming into 23L or 23R, so it's not really a big deal. There are however some noise abatement rules in place at night when departing Manchester, usually if you overfly/route near the CONGA waypoint which some Manchester SIDs and STARs use (that's because the beacon is located where the posh people around the North of England live, and they whine more than a turbine jet engine does about those 'noisy aeroplanes' lol).

With regard to terrain, Almeria however, is close to the Sierra Nevada Mountains (the highest point in Spain and a name which means Snowy Mountains in English - See? who says flight simming isn't educational eh). The Sierra Nevada mountains reach an elevation of over 11,400 feet in places, so it's quite pretty on the descent, although beware of the default FS ATC, which will vector you close to them (not good in cloud, which there often is in those mountains), although on the plus side, you will get to see the place where Spaghetti westerns including The Good The Bad and the Ugly, A Fistful of Dollars and For a Few Dollars More were filmed.

The route would more typically be flown by something like a 757 or A320 (usually by Monarch airlines), but I have in the past been on that flight for real on a British Caledonian L-1011 TriStar, so it's not inconceivable that a larger widebodied jet would do it. The flight distance is almost exactly 1,000 miles, thus it's long enough to alow you to get up to a high cruise altitude (34,000 feet-ish), or do a step climb or if you prefer (step climb to 38,000 would probably get you better fuel economy). It takes about two and a half hours to complete including flight planning, taxy times etc. You get to overfly most of southern England, cross the Channel, pass over France, cross the Pyrenees mountain range and fly all the way across Spain, so the scenery is varied and interesting if you like taking screenshots.

If you want more 'interesting' weather, you can route further west than a typical flight would go and that will put you over the Bay of Biscay west of France, an area well known for storm activity. Fun fact in relation to that: Sailing ships of the Royal Navy in Napoleonic times would often blockade French ports in Biscay, so RN and Privateer skippers would always be on the lookout for French ships attempting to run the blockade, they could tell from a long distance whether it was a French ship they'd spotted because ships local to Biscay would use cut down jib sails, which perform better in stormy weather - that's where the phrase: 'I don't like the cut of his jib' comes from.

Anyway, EGCC-LEAM is a good fun flight.

[Johan_Dees 84]

I believe Klm did, or still does, flights from EHAM to LFPG with 747s loaded witb flowers. NIght departure, very early morning arrival.

very short trip!

[warbirds 555]

I thought I posted this in the P3D forum. Great replies though, thanks.