Hello, so most of the time I use SimBrief to plan my flights and will also sometimes use PFPX if SB doesn't have the profile for the plane I want to fly. I also use AS for the weather. On most flights, I will use whatever altitude is recommended in the FMC, however I find that sometimes I will check on the flight and find the plane bouncing around to wind or turbulence and will descend to a lower altitude to reach smoother air.

 

So when planning my flight how do I check the weather for the points along my route at the altitude I want to fly to make sure I avoid any strong winds or turbulence? This would be especially helpful for long haul flights when I can't be at the computer the whole time and want to ensure the flight will be smooth the whole time. 

 

Thanks 

One way is to plot your route on a significant weather chart. These are high altitude charts, covering large areas where icing/turb, jetstreams and convective clouds are observed/forecasted

Sigwx charts can be obtained easily from the web. One outlet is here:

https://www.theairlinepilots.com/sigwx.php

 

Edited October 24, 20214 yr by SAS443

23 hours ago, SAS443 said:

One way is to plot your route on a significant weather chart. These are high altitude charts, covering large areas where icing/turb, jetstreams and convective clouds are observed/forecasted

Sigwx charts can be obtained easily from the web. One outlet is here:

https://www.theairlinepilots.com/sigwx.php

 

Thanks this is very helpful. The only issue is I'm not sure exactly how to understand all the info or how to plot my course on it. I just started learning how to read forecast charts, but I still don't understand most of what it means. For example in the attached pic what does the area circled in red mean? I know it's showing the wind speed and direction at FL360, but how am I supposed to interoperate it. Does that mean I should avoid that altitude, as the winds look pretty strong. If so, how would I know what the best altitude to be at would be for a smooth ride.

I mainly fly in the 737 or 747 but also sometimes the 777 and 787. I would imagine the limits would be different for something like a 737 and 747 but I'm not sure what that is.  

 

https://imgur.com/a/auFM6CY

Edited October 25, 20214 yr by jt233

That's a Jetstream, at Flight Level 360, the solid black triangles are 50kt markers, the single slashes are 10kt markers, so you can see the speed is varying between 100-140 kts.

The area looking a bit like a caterpillar, just west of the Jetstream shows that within that area, there's isolated thunderstorms imbedded in clouds, tops are 42,000, base is below 24,000, that's what the XXX means.

If you Google "Sig weather chart decode", there's loads of sites that will give you chapter and verse on the symbols.

Eugene