Originally Posted by
double_barrel
How accurately can aircraft predict the best altitude and route for their journey to take advantage of high altitude winds ?
How are winds aloft measured? With what frequency and resolution ? Is it trial and error, or reports from 'company' or is there a way of 'crowd sourcing' the information? If there was an automated system for all aircraft to continually share the windspeed and direction they were encountering, that should build-up a nice picture?
So many questions....
I wouldn’t say the aircraft is predicting the best route. As pointed out earlier the routes during busy times are organized by ATC. Modern aircraft can tell you what the optimum altitude is based on the aircraft's current weight (which it calculates continuously) and the winds aloft forecasts which the crew enter into the flight management computer. Traditional winds aloft forecasts (FBs in Met speak) come out every 6 hours. However with so many aircraft now able to send winds aloft data it is very much as you say crowd sourced data that is is constantly being up dated. On a busy route like the eastbound NAT tracks during the evening you could reload fresh wind data every 30 minutes if you were bored.