Congratulations Bill, I was once told the average pilot only has about 3 or 4 type ratings in him so choose them wisely!

RE the NATs.

The westbound track you mention would still be made up of filed waypoints at 10 degree longitude intervals, and would be referred to as a “random route”. The NATs are meant to follow the best winds , as you know, but sometimes the flight planning software finds something a little more optimised instead. It’s possible to fly a route that partly follows a NAT track but then breaks off and goes its own way, or indeed joins a NAT later on, these are referred to as composite tracks.

As well as the winds airspace charges sometimes have a factor in the routing. In years gone by a lot more traffic from Europe to the west coast of America went via Scottish airspace, up to Stornaway for example, the U.K. national air traffic service eventually got wise to this and cranked the airspace charge up a bit( or the price was always the same and the airlines got wise to a cheaper alternative, one or the other ! ) Nowadays it’s a lot more common than it used to be to route more to the south to make use of the cheaper Irish airspace. It may take longer and use more fuel but the saving in airspace charges justifies the routing.

Jon

 

On 8/26/2019 at 1:28 PM, Mace said:

Congrats on the 330 type rating!

Question about North Atlantic Tracks (NAT) -- assume you guys use them most of the time?   I've gone transatlantic two different times with Lufthansa, and I've noticed Lufthansa seemed to fly a NAT track eastbound, but westbound it looked like they took the great circle routing instead, probably because of winds (maybe westbound was a track routing also, but it didn't look like it to me).  Have you ever seen that before, flying the NAT eastbound, but using a GPS/GC routing west?

 

Not sure yet, as I have my international IOE this coming week, but my fiance who is on the 767 says she has done both. 🙂