Hi chaps,
The other day I was flying the PMDG 737ngx 800 from EGKK to EGCC, to land on runway 05L using STAR DAYNE2A and transition DAYNE. This approach leads to crossing MCT at 3000 feet on track 233 degress, then turning left onto 188 degrees and then turning right through 180 degrees to intercept the localiser for 05L. I was flying with LNAV and VNAV at the time, and the aircraft decided to turn left instead of right to pick up the reciprocal 008 degrees. The reason was fairly obvious, the system cannot know which way to turn when going on to a reciprocal heading!
I guess it might have been better to have disconnected from LNAV and flown manually or to go into MCP HDG mode, and set the heading to just less than 008 to force it to turn right? What would the normal practice be, perhaps to fly the whole approach in MCP HEADING and MCP SPEED mode, or fly it manually?
I would be interested in any comments.
Best wishes,
Dennis Hickman