Originally Posted by
TotalBeginner
-Does the dispatcher take into consideration the possibility of a reclearance to an adjacent NAT track when calculating fuel requirements
Your profile states you are in the UK so whilst you are getting some useful info from our American colleagues you perhaps need be aware about the difference in terminology/role of "dispatchers" UK vs USA...it's one of those "you say potatoes, I say potatoes" things, or in other words "we often do things differently over here".
In the UK and possibly elsewhere in Europe the lady or gent "dispatcher" (aka Turn Round Manager in some airlines) who was actually out on the ramp overseeing the loading of your flight out of, say LHR, would probably have some choice words for you if you rang him/her asking about a Oceanic re-route when you'd got to 30 west. The reason being it will have been a flight planning department that generated and issued your ETOPS plan and they won't get involved and also do not have to consulted about any in-flight re-clearance ..Accepting/planning a re-clearance is usually a DIY job for the crew using onboard assets...
As others have said, under the UK type ruleset pragmatically once you have dispatched the ETOPS planning becomes a bit irrelevant - you are free to use
any suitable and available airports within 180 minutes of your route of flight and you can use the ALTN (alternate) facility of the FMC mentioned by deltahotel to keep an eye on ETPS, ERAs etc ...
I assumed that this would be easier to determine, simply by plotting the new clearance on your chart.
What charts.
? You'll struggle to find a papercharts on many flight decks in these days in these days of almost universal EFB or iPad usage. As for getting dividers or a pair of compasses airside.....
....would the usual 5% CONT be enough to cover this?
Just a final bit of background info that a 5% figure contingency fuel is not that "usual" these days, it's often as not a statistically derived figure which may be more or less than 5% based on analysis of the burn of previous flights between that airport pair..