Transatlantic tracks

[Hartington]

Flew LHR/DEN last Friday. Take off from 9R followed by a right turn and a trip down the M4 over Swansea and Southern Ireland then south of Greenland. Whenever I've done that trip before we've gone up over Manchester then over Southern Greenland.

Even the pilot seemed surprised by the routing.

The question is whether this was simply a result of the weather and where the tracks happened to be that day or whether, because the Denver flight doesn't leave LHR until 1535 the track system has been partially dismantled Westbound to allow the Eastbound tracks for the overnight flights to be created? Are there always two sets of tracks, one for eat and one for westbound or what?

[Bigears]

Seems like a few simple questions, but the answers could go on for hours (well at least from someone more knowledgeable than me they could!!).

In lieu of a longer answer from said person,
here (https://www.notams.jcs.mil/nat.html) you'll find the tracks for the day/night, as appropriate for when you look.
Here (http://gc.kls2.com/) you find a great circle mapper, where if you input LHR-DEN you'll see the track of least distance (don't know if you were subject to ETOPS rules).
If you register here (http://www.ais.org.uk/registration/control/start?locale=en_GB&type=sb) you can access the UK AIP. Under 'ENR' Section 2.2 a good description of the tracks is to be found.
Have fun! :confused: :rolleyes:

[OBK!]

The organised track system:

Eastbound by night, Westbound by day.

I would probably go for prevailing winds as the answer to you and your pilots querries, then again, if he had the slightest piece of logic he would of figured that one out himself...so it could just be a spurios one off flight plan . :confused:

cheers
obk