Airlines avoiding weather

[drpixie]

I was tracking Avalon-Ballarat above the worst of the cloud today, things being not quite as miserable aloft as they looked from the ground. We heard someone requesting diversion around "a paint" at Arbey but couldn't see anything significant from Lloyd, and so got to thinking about weather. Often, you heavies are obviously busy diverting around stuff that all right-thinking-and-clean-living-pilots would avoid, but not always.

Serious, or otherwise, answers from airline drivers please - what are policy and practice on diverting around weather. A few potential considerations came to mind:


Track shortening - might we have heard a round-about request for more direct track, politely "we'd like to make up time, and know you're not accepting tracking-shortening requests, but (just look at that!) there's some weather we'd like to conveniently avoid by going direct."

Drinks service - company policy to avoid anything that stops the drinks/snacks trolley because that is profit margin for the flight.

Aircraft cleaning - avoid anything that will make the nervous folks up the back feel airsick, because cleaning-up will delay the habitual quick turn-around.

G load factor - our airliners have small load factors (+2.5G?) so avoid bumps at any cost.

Soothe the scared pax - half of all people are sacred of flying (my estimate - just scared, not terrified) so do everything possible to avoid being like an aircraft.

Crew's coffee - Capt just got his coffee...


So how many of those, and what else, might be factors?

[TOUCH-AND-GO]

Perhaps the freezing level just above 3000 ft is the culprit at work here ? :}

[waren9]

mr pixie

the priorities are

safety
comfort
schedule

in that order. if individual crews want to screw the scrum then thats up to them

[KABOY]

Well, I could drive straight over the corrugated section of the road and not give a damn or manouvre to the middle and enjoy a smooth section.

When you have a 100+people in the back not everyone enjoys a bumpy ride.

Professionalism encompasses everything from the front of the aeroplane to the back.

[Capt Fathom]

If you are going to spill your coffee, then you have to go around it. Whatever it is?

[compressor stall]

Hmm. I know of a flight that hit some bumps and the coffee up front didn't spill a drop but the FA and cart down the rear rows hit the roof. Literally.

[TWOTBAGS]

Safety
Comfort
Schedule

In that order, or Jets appeared to be lightening magnets, simple change in the OM to say weather avoidance should be 50nm from cells when lightening activity is present.........and have not been struck in years. 50 left or right when enroute is nothing compared to having to hold at CG for the rest of my life trying to get to BNE.

Its funny that when you are fresh you are dieing to get your IR so you can go in straight lines and bust a cloud or two. Now I do everything to avoid pretty much anything i can simply not to spill the drinks.

[training wheels]

Its funny that when you are fresh you are dieing to get your IR so you can go in straight lines and bust a cloud or two.

True, but that's before we knew what was in those clouds, especially the big fluffy ones .. :\

[Metro man]

Basically heavies have the performance and equipment to deal with weather. We fly above it most of the time and around it when we can't. I can see thunderstorms from a couple of hundred miles away and by pressing a few buttons on the FMS I can offset my track by X miles and regain track at the next reporting point.

Injured passengers and bent airframes do not go down well with management, particularly if it makes the evening news. Personally I'd rather fly past a thunderstorm by 20 miles on the upwind side while drinking my tea and chatting to the hostie.

[*Lancer*]

50nm!? One hundred kilometres from a single cell!? Surely you're kidding... You can't get a realistic picture until about 80nm anyway. What would you do in a terminal area in the tropics?

[TWOTBAGS]

50is what is in our OM. Cruising across the Pacific and dodging the isolated cells we get on the east coast is easily avoidance.

The nocturnal equatorial stuff through asia is a whole different matter, you should follow the CX boys and see how far they go left and right crossing indo and the philippines!

Since we went to 50, the number of strikes have dropped significantly, add in fewer schedule disruptions let alone getting a ginger beer in a cheery picker in the pissing rain to change a missing static wick on the elevator and confirm there are no entry/exit points......

50 left/right costs us about 3mins in diversion when the decision is made soon enough, as opposed to the speed up/slow down that ATC gives you the cost to the organization is negligible, but the benefit is massive.:ok: