Dealing with winds aloft

[AnthonyGA]

I was flying along in my sim a few days ago, from KASE to KPHX, and I encountered some nasty headwinds—strong enough that I double-checked the real-world winds aloft to see if there might be an error in the sim (there was no error). As I tried to figure out what to do to reduce my fuel burn to KPHX, I started wondering about how real-world pilots and airlines deal with this.

In this case, winds seemed to be around 60-80 knots from the west from around FL190 to FL420. I was in a Citation. The path of the winds was quite wide. Do jet streams drop as low as FL190, or are headwinds like this just examples of prevailing winds?

How do you deal with these in real life? Do you modify routing to try to fly around them, or do you try to fly above or below them, or do you just pile on extra fuel and grin and bear it? According to the NOAA report, the winds let up below FL190, but flying at 18,000 feet for 500 nautical miles seemed like it might not be very economical. And the swath of the winds was hundreds of miles wide, so I didn't see how I could fly around them. They let up around FL420, and supposedly a Citation X can get above that, but it would be a pricey climb. Fortunately, I had nearly three times the fuel I had calculated as necessary to make the trip (fuel in the virtual universe is cheap) so I just charged on through it and suffered only a delay in arrival. But what would you do in real life? For the sake of realism, I like to learn how it's done in real life so that I can do the same in simulation.

[parabellum]

You give yourself or, if you are lucky, receive a complete weather brief before you even think of leaving the ground. From this brief you should be able to establish the head wind component for your journey, adjust your flighty time accordingly and then load the right amount of fuel. In the event that the wind is stronger than forecast you would normally carry 5% extra of your estimated fuel burn as contingency to cover this possibility. One thing you don't do is load still air fuel and hope for the best.

[PilotsOfTheCaribbean]

Alas, so much apparatus to be found in the bedroom, proves to be a disappointment when ones expectations are translated into the real world. So I am reliably informed.

[Rainboe]

The service that provides the fuel plans (and PLOG) for the type you are flying has the complete database of winds and weather conditions. Their computer will also have the complete performance figures for the type and will work out whether it is better to restrict altitude in order to be more economical. So it should never really be a surprise. However it does occasionally happen that you will start to become concerned if the winds are out by 90 degrees and/or 80 knots. You must start poring over your wind and front charts trying to see why. It will probably be completely different in 100 miles- maybe a jetstream has whipped over further than expected. I have dropped altitude by up to 8000' to gt out of such winds, but mainly turbulence causes this to happen- for instance within 100 miles of TOD, I won't take turbulence and will happily drop out of it- the queues for the washrooms are then pretty large and better to let people walk and visit the washroom after food.

Commercial flights don't have the luxury of carrying so much fuel. Most are flying on legal minimum with only a small amount of discretionary fuel available. The scenario you describe is 'unreal'.