My first ETOPS flight

[Richard McDonald Woods 9]

Yesterday I decided to tackle my first ETOPS flight. I flew the 9 hr sector FACT-YPPH. Because I felt that I had achieved a personal goal, I thought others may be interested in my experience. So here goes!

I determined that I could not fly my B77L over this distance with ETOPS 240 (it left an unacceptable hole in the middle of the South Pacific), so I granted myself ETOPS 276. I was then able to create a FP with 3 en route diversion airports - FAEL (Port Elizabeth), FIMP (Mauritius, Pleasance) and YBLN (Bussleton). The FP generated was:

OKTE1C OKTED DCT AVANA/N0488F350 DCT 39S030E 42S040E 44S050E 44S060E/N0485F370 44S070E 44S080E 42S090E 40S100E/N0483F390 36S110E DCT PH Q67 WOORA WOOR2V

I had a payload of 52.4 tonnes, fuel uplift of 76.7 tonnes, and a takeoff weight of 274.0 tonnes.

I pushed back from gate A5 at FACT for a take-off at rwy 19 at 0900z exactly. Landed at YPPH rwy 21 at 1756z and taxied to gate 54.

My flight over these waypoints was never more than 3 minutes late nor early and my FREM increased over my planned fuel smoothly so that it was +1.3 tonnes by 36S110E. I landed with 15.7 tonnes against the plan value of 14.8 tonnes. I assume this variance was because the tail winds injected by Active Sky Next were slightly stronger than forecast at times. The planned flight time was again within 3 minutes.

A very new experience for me was navigating towards en route fixes. I set successive fixes for FAEL, my ETOPS entry at S3919.1 E03054.0, my Equal Time Point FAEL/FIMP at S4403.7 E05143.5, and my Critical Point FIMP/YBLN at S4401.7 E07918.8. This meant careful navigation watch for both my planned route and the distances and directions to en route deviation airports.

Overall, I have a great admiration for Christian Grill's PFPX. It has already given me great satisfaction in flying more challenging routes.

I hope that this description gives you the urge to stretch your experiences.

[alpha117 51]

Very good and well done. I totally agree PFPX takes us mere Flight Simmers into a better understanding of Real World dispatching and flying.