Preferential Enroute Adequate Airports

[Rónán O Cadhain 71]

Would it be possible to create a list of airports for PFPX to take as the preferential airports when selecting them during the planning stage? Where my dad works it's preferred to divert to an airport that they serve on a regular basis as they'll have contracts with a handling agent set up already and they'll be familiar with the airport.

Eg. If an airport near Frankfurt was required to be an adequate airport, PFPX would chose EDDF over EDFH, or if near Berlin, EDDB would be chosen over EDDT.

It'd be nice to be able to create a list that PFPX could look at to chose the preferred Adequate Enroute Airport from.

Thanks,

Rónán.

[dougsnow 50]

Thats available on the airport data form. Plus, for some of us with dispatchers and unautomated dispatch systems (US carriers operating under US FAR 121), the last thing I'll let a computer do is select my alternate FOR me.

[Rónán O Cadhain 71]

Sorry, I know that, I was talking about the enroute adequate airports, I know about the destination alternate list, it's enroute ones I'm asking about.

Thanks,
Rónán.

[renogu 3]

Hi,

I agree with Rónán, it would be really useful to be able to select prefered enroute adequate airports along a route.

For now PFPX selects the adequates according to WX and Runway Length I guess but sometimes we need to select other adequates because they are more appropriate in case of a divertion (Accomodations in the city...).

Thanks

[belisar 126]

As in having a list of adequate airports linked to a certain route that PFPX loads automatically every time that route is loaded (or a certain pair of origin / destination)? You can as of now change the en route adequate airports to whatever you like manually, that is why I am asking.

The second thing is that I don't think PFPX considers weather in the list of adequate airports at all. To do that, it would need to index all the approaches of all the airports in terms of their charted minima, which is a nice consideration but not a requirement. Then again, to make suggestions on suitable ETOPS alternates, which indeed requires a consideration of weather conditions at the time of use, it would need to compare the forecast weather conditions against the regulations governing ETOPS minima, which while almost the same, they are not 100% the same. Then there is the small issue of NOTAMs. If ILS is inop at the expected runway in use in BIKF for example, and that was being considered for an ETOPS suitable, the ILS landing minima would not apply anymore, the non precision approach minima would. Besides that an update of this data would be needed with each AIRAC cycle in case something changed and minimas are not part of Navigraph or Aerosoft Navdata updating service.

If it sounds complex, it is, as long as you rely on software to do all that. I have no idea how real world dispatch software deal with these, but I see it really difficult to implement in PFPX.

As far specifying a list of preferred adequate airports, which PFPX would look up for the adequate airport selection first, and if nothing is found, switch to its current selection logic, and then if nothing found there either, create an ETOPS segment might be a daunting task on its own .

In short, I think that for the near future, having a handy list yourself would do the trick very well. In my case, I just go with what it comes up and have an en route chart handy with my preferred airports highlighted. In case of a hypothetical medical emergency, I think a diversion to an airport where we know adequate health services are available (i.e Goose Bay) would the place to go even if it is not on the list of adequate airports (if fuel was not an issue, which most probably it wouldn't).

That's my 2c,

Best,

Belisar

[FlightSimSoft.com 283]

The adequate airports are only required for legal reasons to check if the planned flight remains within treshold distance or if it requires ETOPS planning.
It's not really an alternate aiport where you want to divert to.

[Dave Lamb 9]

My solution is to change the adequate airport list to the enroute alternates I would use over a specific route. Gives me the wx for those alternates...

Of course, you need to change it every time you build the flight plan, but then again, my enroute alts might change, so putting them back in is not a bad thing.

Like Doug, I select my alternates myself (both enroute and destination)...would NEVER allow computer to do it...here in the states, dispatchers are required to choose the alternate anyway... It's that "operational control" business...

Cheers,

Dave

[FlightSimSoft.com 283]

Like Doug, I select my alternates myself (both enroute and destination)...would NEVER allow computer to do it...here in the states, dispatchers are required to choose the alternate anyway... It's that "operational control" business...

Sure, the PFPX selected alternates are a 'proposal'. You are free to change them as required.

[calimhiro 1]

This was one of my request in a previous topic :

Hello,

When computing an ETOPS flight, I have noticed that the program selects 60 minutes adequate airports that sometimes are not adequate for a specific type of aircraft (example a 1200m runway length is not sufficient for a B777).

Is there a way to create an adequate airport database related to the aircraft type chosen ? Or maybe another idea is to be able to save a list of adequate airports between a city pair ?

[unquote]

Stéphane LI-THIAO-TE

Envoyé de mon iPad à l'aide de Tapatalk HD

[CoolP 24]

Would it be possible to create a list of airports for PFPX to take as the preferential airports when selecting them during the planning stage? [...]

g. If an airport near Frankfurt was required to be an adequate airport, PFPX would chose EDDF over EDFH, or if near Berlin, EDDB would be chosen over EDDT.

My guess would be that you can only work the other way around. That's with the airport properties and picking the option to not use it as alternate. So e.g. EDFH gets tagged like that and therefore won't show up on the automatic 'find' process and another nearby alternative wins instead. Well, if I got that right.

But I see you are asking for another option, like for EDDF receiving a 'prioritise over other alternates' tag or something, right?

[Bill Rowe 2]

The second thing is that I don't think PFPX considers weather in the list of adequate airports at all. To do that, it would need to index all the approaches of all the airports in terms of their charted minima, which is a nice consideration but not a requirement.

It's clear that weather is not considered when selecting adequate airports on the route of flight. I agree with Belisar that it would be hard to have all the information available for PFPX to determine if weather is acceptable to be used as adequate for a given flight, but I would like it if the software excluded airports where no weather is available. For example I was planning a flight that passed over northern Greenland and BGNO was circled as an adequate airport, but no METAR or TAF were available. Seems to me this would be an easy exclusion to make.

Also, when I right click an airport it brings up a menu allowing me to add it as an alternate (enroute, destination etc.) At the bottom is an item "Adequate Airport" If select it, it adds the airport to the list of adequate airports used for the flight and displayed on the map. But selecting this item for an airport already being used as adequate does nothing. It would be nice if this menu item was a toggle so you could force PFPX to not use an airport selected as adequate based on the planner's judgement (i.e. marginal weather, short runway, etc).

Bill Rowe