Addendum to my prior: WestJet has a daily Victoria/Toronto B737-700NG Flight # 706.1851 nm - 4h 38m non stop. Today's flight is scheduled for FL390 according to Flight Tracker.---------- Flight 706 departed on time and reached Cruise 390 about 45 minutes later per Flight Tracker.This will be all Economy(coach) seating. WJ does not offer Business nor First Class. WestJet currently reports an overall load factor in the 75% range.At time of writing, 706 is E bound on the S edge of the 49th parallel, about to enter Idaho, maintaining FL390. Alex Reid

2nd Addendum- watching the progress of Flight 706, I realize he (she?) is flying a Great Circle route over Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin etc. No more airways routings for Westjet! My guess is this will save possibly 150 miles over a conventional "airways" routing. No wonder they use FL390/400!Anybody know how I would program the CDU for Great Circle nav over North America ?Alex Reid

Are you sure they are using Great Circle? Sometimes it looks like GC but they are actually using airways.RhettE8500, Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro, ASUS P5E3 Premium, BFG 8800GTX 756 (nVidia 169 WHQL), 4gb DDR3 1600 Patriot Cas7 7-7-7-20 (2T), PC Power 750, WD 150gb 10000rpm Raptor, Seagate 500gb, Silverstone TJ09 case, Vista Ultimate 64

>2nd Addendum- watching the progress of Flight 706, I realize>he (she?) is flying a Great Circle route over Washington,>Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin etc. No>more airways routings for Westjet! >My guess is this will save possibly 150 miles over a>conventional "airways" routing. No wonder they use FL390/400!>Anybody know how I would program the CDU for Great Circle nav>over North America ?>Alex ReidNothing terribly amazing about that, if traffic allows, the controller can always give a you a "direct" somewhere way down the line. That will in essence be your great circle across the continent. You don't need to special program the CDU for it. All you have to do is takeoff from Vancouver and then hit Direct YYZ in your PMDG FMS. You'll knock yourself out great-circling for the next five hours.

Kevin/Rhett- You see when you get old you get dull! Of course, plug in Direct To whatever, for a GC routing!! Thank you.In this case, the routing was- HUH J534 IWACK GGW DLH TIBUD J525. My old High Level chart shows no airway -IWACK to GGW nor DLH nor TIBUD.Clearly WestJet picked these wpts as an approximation of GrCir- and with the approval of ATC and the FAA!! I believe that the entire WestJet fleet (all 737NGs)is nav equipped for RNAV.Thanks for the insights.Alex Reid

>Kevin/Rhett- You see when you get old you get dull! Of>course, plug in Direct To whatever, for a GC routing!! Thank>you.>In this case, the routing was- HUH J534 IWACK GGW DLH TIBUD>J525. My old High Level chart shows no airway -IWACK to GGW>nor DLH nor TIBUD.>Clearly WestJet picked these wpts as an approximation of>GrCir- and with the approval of ATC and the FAA!! >I believe that the entire WestJet fleet (all 737NGs)is nav>equipped for RNAV.>Thanks for the insights.>Alex Reid>Well there are relatively new RNAV routes that are nice and and long with little need to change directions.In the US they are called Q and T routes instead of the original J routes.

Hi all,I thought the topic was range of the 7 3 7 - 8 0 0 ??The B737-700 is a rather different airplane. . . much lighter with more or less the same engines ( although derated for the 700 . . . ),but in any case much more powerful in relation to size of aircraft.I have no RW planning charts for the 700, but alone the time to Fl390 of 45 minutes is selfexplanatory - the 800 needs about 20 mins at max tow to FL 320 - another 25 mins for 7000 ft at climb power needs most probably more fuel than a step climb later on?Flight tracker is a nice tool. . .but not always the reality. They use the f i l e d flight plans and you all know that in reality the flight might use other routes accdg. to ATC. . .On a flight from EDDF to KDFW my son ( CP MD11 ) got a routing over Northern Canada DIRECT to BYP for a BONHAM5 arrival. . . direct routings over the North American continent are common - much better for the fuel economy than flying always at MAX altitude. . .and much better than in Europe! Karl-Heinz - EDDI/THF " Tempelhof "" The mother of all airports " - Sir Norman Fosterhttp://www.precisionmanuals.com/images/forum/747400.jpg

Karl-Heinz: FWIW- This info from Airliners.net -737-800 - Standard range with 162 passengers is 1990 nm OR 2940 nm for high gross weight version. Typical cruising speed Mach 0.785. Max certificated altitude 41,000 ft. Max single class seating for 189. High gross weight max takeoff 174,200 lb.Alex Reid