10 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

That's why qualified dispatchers like my self (FAA license) have spent many years learning our craft, and still 13 years in the job still learning new stuff every day. We are a funny breed of individuals. 

We don't just throw a route from Flightaware into pfpx and think we are masters of flightplanning.   There is so much more to it than that. 

Sorry but you totally missed my point.

Answers to his questions:

1) How do you know which runway you will be arriving at when composing a flight plan? 
It is based on wind direction, which may change before your arrival.  So you can anticipate but it may change.

2) Simbrief and MSFS make it seem like you have full control over your route - is this true in real life?
Yes and No.  It depends on whether you are flying VFR or whether you are flying IFR, or VFR with flight following.  It also depends on whether you are flying through any portion of Class-controlled airspace.

3) As you get closer to an airport, does ATC alter your route, or do they let you follow your flight plan most of the time?
Again. Depends on whether you are flying IFR or VFR with flight following.  If you place yourself under ATC control they can then direct you as meets their needs.  Also depends on whether you are flying into a towered airport (one with manned ATC tower).

 

Edited March 19, 20215 yr by fppilot

13 hours ago, Glenn Fitzpatrick said:

The game takes no notice ( AFAIK at least)  of these published airways

Yes and no; you can kind of force the default MSFS flight planner to use the airways you want. Almost all airways are where they are because they are pathways in the sky drawn between ground-based nav aids or reporting points etc, and their start points and intersections are if not directly over those ground-based markers, then a specific vector and distance from one. If you do use charts and pick a routing which uses airways, you can usually replicate that in the sim by choosing routes which are defined by those locations, and in doing that, you will be traversing those airways.

You can add or subtract as many waypoints as you like to any flight plan you like in the default planner in order to achieve that, so if you like, you can do this if you want to. I added these points to a sim-generated high altitude route no problem:

 

Edited March 19, 20215 yr by Chock

1 hour ago, fppilot said:

Sorry but you totally missed my point.

Answers to his questions:

1) How do you know which runway you will be arriving at when composing a flight plan? 
It is based on wind direction, which may change before your arrival.  So you can anticipate but it may change.

2) Simbrief and MSFS make it seem like you have full control over your route - is this true in real life?
Yes and No.  It depends on whether you are flying VFR or whether you are flying IFR, or VFR with flight following.  It also depends on whether you are flying through any portion of Class-controlled airspace.

3) As you get closer to an airport, does ATC alter your route, or do they let you follow your flight plan most of the time?
Again. Depends on whether you are flying IFR or VFR with flight following.  If you place yourself under ATC control they can then direct you as meets their needs.  Also depends on whether you are flying into a towered airport (one with manned ATC tower).

 

1) How do you know which runway you will be arriving at when composing a flight plan? 
It is based on wind direction, which may change before your arrival.  So you can anticipate but it may change.    -----

So in my career I have worked on Jetplanner, LIDO, FW:Z / Sabre.

Now to try and keep it as brief as possible each system works differently and has its pro's and cons.  Jetplanner and Saber are both good at running  flightplans that are more manually based.

So if you have a small fleet, and as a company you have the time to spend preparing each flightplan they are more or less ok doing the job.  you input the normal following stuff 

TO/FROM , etd, fuel policys, payload, do you want to run a plan based on fuel or time (the most fuel effective or the fastest route possible) 

the alternates etc etc and hit go and it will make you a plan pretty much like simbiref or pfpx does.

any mels or proformance related issues, you input them into the system too.

Now the devil in the detail is what you ask the system to do for the routing,  so if you have some "stored routes" you can ask jetplanner or sabre to try and use them and it will run it the plans based on the stored routes.

You will also tell it run it "on the tracks" or "off the tracks"  which is an inresting one because the Nat Tracks are soon going to be a thing of the past.

you can tell the routing to go via a waypoint, or the opposite to avoid a waypoint, same as countries you can tell it to avoid firs or go via them

then once you have run a few plans with the different options you look at which one complies to your company procedures and you package it up and wither email to the crew/handler or upload to the crew portal, boom done, then you move onto the next one.

To answer your question you will look at what the winds are doing, check the notams and then i always "force" the system to use a specific runway that I knoiw they will more than likely be using.  But once again it depends on your company procedure.  For example I have a mate at another airline and their policy is to always use the longest SID/STAR on the flightplan which gives you more fuel to use.

This in my opinion is nuts because for example when they fly to KLAX from europe they chose the STARS onto the 6s and 7s at LAX so it causes the pilots a headache changing the FMC after 11 hours when they are obviously going to get the 24s and 25s.  not to mention the routing overall is longer and burns money. 

Now... LIDO is different.  its designed to work on a big schedules and there isnt really much user imputs. it looks at the schedule, looks at the payloads,looks at stored routes, it can read notams for airspace closures and then it does it all for you, packages them up and uploads it to the crew portal.  You turn it on, tell it to do its thing and it does it all automaticaly, every time a reject from eurocontrol comes up it will tell you, and you fix it. and every time you get a over max take off weight it does the same, so you run a manuel one and tweak it.

The downside to it being automated is it doest understand what is a horrible approach is and what is not and it doesnt take into account crew factors,  because its a machine.

so for example if you take a EGKK-LXGB you really want to be running a plan down over france, over spain, over Malaga and finishing at PIMOS which is the standard thing. but if the routing going down the portugal coast and then doing that  horrrible turn over Tangiers and to pick up the other star is a few minutes shorter it will choose that. Its doesnt care that the drivers would rather have a 3 minute longer flight time and an easier star and a more standard approach.  Like I said It doesnt understand it.  why would it, it reads the chart details for the transition details and plans what it thinks is the most effiecent route because thats what its payied to do.

It will also do the same on a LOWI flightplan, it doesnt care thats its maybe a bit more easier to land on 26 via RTT then 08 via Matox (i think thats the waypoint) if the winds are favouring 8 by just a couple of knots it will plan 08 automatically, the difference there is you can rerun it and force it to use the other STAR to land on 26.  When I got a LOWI I used always force it onto 26 and ask the skipper is thats what he/she wants for example.

So to answer your question, yes and no we run the flightplans based on the predicted winds but also on company policy.

On a side note whenever I am doing flights on the sim (from other operators) or looking up routings on eurocontrol is intersting to see what routes airlines file, and what alternates they are using, it shows how good or bad they are at flightplanning its normally smaller outfits that do shocking flightplanning. 

ill try and find one for you to show you. 

 

        

Edited March 19, 20215 yr by fluffyflops

Deleted by self

Edited March 19, 20215 yr by fppilot

21 hours ago, fluffyflops said:

1) How do you know which runway you will be arriving at when composing a flight plan? 
It is based on wind direction, which may change before your arrival.  So you can anticipate but it may change.    -----

So in my career I have worked on Jetplanner, LIDO, FW:Z / Sabre.

...

Now the devil in the detail is what you ask the system to do for the routing,  so if you have some "stored routes" you can ask jetplanner or sabre to try and use them and it will run it the plans based on the stored routes.

..

This in my opinion is nuts because for example when they fly to KLAX from europe they chose the STARS onto the 6s and 7s at LAX so it causes the pilots a headache changing the FMC after 11 hours when they are obviously going to get the 24s and 25s.  not to mention the routing overall is longer and burns money. 

..

On a side note whenever I am doing flights on the sim (from other operators) or looking up routings on eurocontrol is intersting to see what routes airlines file, and what alternates they are using, it shows how good or bad they are at flightplanning its normally smaller outfits that do shocking flightplanning. 

ill try and find one for you to show you. 

Very cool to see what it's like from an actual dispatcher's perspective. Did you work for an airline? Your example of LAX is the exact type of nonsensical scenario in the sim that caused me to question what happens in real life, and it's crazy that the same issue exists sometimes. To your point, I guess that's what differentiates a good dispatcher from a ... less than good one. Very interesting to hear about all of the different factors and systems that come into play.

Quick question: how is the performance of a dispatcher measured? Is fuel consumption a factor? Do pilots (or the company) "rate" your flight plans? I always imagine a constant war between commercial / business objectives and safety going on behind the scenes. 

Thanks for taking the time to provide a window into your world.

 

31 minutes ago, enright said:

Very cool to see what it's like from an actual dispatcher's perspective. Did you work for an airline? Your example of LAX is the exact type of nonsensical scenario in the sim that caused me to question what happens in real life, and it's crazy that the same issue exists sometimes. To your point, I guess that's what differentiates a good dispatcher from a ... less than good one. Very interesting to hear about all of the different factors and systems that come into play.

Quick question: how is the performance of a dispatcher measured? Is fuel consumption a factor? Do pilots (or the company) "rate" your flight plans? I always imagine a constant war between commercial / business objectives and safety going on behind the scenes. 

Thanks for taking the time to provide a window into your world.

 

hello yes I work at a well know long haul airline.

its a hard question,  We do things in europe differently than in the USA.  in Europe you dont need a JAA disptachers certificate (like in the USA) or to pass the NAVCanada exams in Canada.

Ive worked with people before in my career that cant even read jepp charts  for example.  as mentioned when working on lido which churns out flightplans without you having to do anything you only need to worry about the plans it rejects.

Ive worked with people before in airline ops that if you gave them a picture of a  320, 767, 757 they wouldnt be able to tell you which one was which, they dont need to they are punching buttons on a keyboard.  I even worked with a girl once who couldnt put her finger on a map where Paris is, she'd worked in OPS for 10 years.

Id say a measure of a dispatchers proformance is based on

a.Knowledge of various things, the example a gave you of LOWI and LXGB for example, ive worked with people that know they are both tricky places to fly into and you need to be rated, but they couldnt tell you why because they cant read charts, or better still have never sat in the flightdeck on a famil flight or have knowledge of flying an a/c.  this is why in my early days flightsimming helped me get the job and understand it.   

b.how to get out of a stickey situation when a flightplan wont run properly or validate.

 

Id also say that airline ops in UK/Europe to get in is probably 85% of who you know in the company and 15 percent based on previous knowledge etc,  sounds awful but airline ops has always been like that, as mentioned Ive worked with people before than cant find paris on a map, but whos mother, father,friend knew someone and got them in, ive also found in ops or office based roles in general, the people with the most buzzwords normally are the least qualfied or "good at the job"  we've often made jokes at work before and said "get him off the ops desk and into a buzzwords managers type role so he cant cause any more delays"  harse but true. Welcome to ops.

    

Edited March 20, 20215 yr by fluffyflops