Flight Routings

[David Sharpe]

Had a friend who was on Easy Jet from Manchester to Malaga last Friday (26th February) they were delayed due to the French Air Traffic Control strike that was ongoing according to the flight deck, and eventually re-routed, going "the long way round"

Does anybody have any idea of the route that they would have taken to avoid French Airspace, presumably out over the Bay of Biscay and into Spain this way ? Presumably this was quite a common occurance last week to minimise delays ?

[QWERTY9]

Your presumption was close, it routed (in simple terms) MAN -Dublin - Cork into Oceanic Controlled airspace - LASNO to just east of Santiago, then clipping NW portugal to just west of Madrid - Toledo - Malaga.

A pretty standard route to avoid French airspace involving a costly approx detour of 250nm compared to a standard routing.

[WHBM]

Think of it being similar to the way the RAF used to go to Gibraltar (and many points beyond) in WW2.

Met a chap who had to travel from London to Moscow in 1943, and asked which way they flew. Routing was UK-Gibraltar, Malta, Nicosia, Yalta, Moscow. In comparison to which this recent trip to Malaga is the smallest of doglegs !

a costly approx detour of 250nm Sounds like about an extra 30 minutes flying. So the same sort of impact as a 30 minute hold approaching Heathrow, which is standard stuff.

[Groundloop]

a costly approx detour of 250nm compared to a standard routing.

Not always a costly detour. Routes like this are sometimes used if more favourable winds are forecast. Can actually be cheaper on occasions.

[potkettleblack]

Would have saved a bit on nav fees as well since part of the flight would have been in MNPS airspace.

[QWERTY9]

I would imagine for a Lo-cost airline a detour of 250nm has a much more significant impact due to associated costs, a/c turn around times and meeting schedules, crew duty hours, a/c avialability etc. The impact could be negated somewhat by a larger full service airline.

As for nav fees, yes I would imagine a small saving would have been made in this case.

WHBM - Nothing standard about a 30min hold approaching LHR, average holding time is far less, in the region of 6 minutes. Yes it can reach 30mins occasionally, but in the wider scheme of things those occurences are far from the norm.

[EGCC4284]

Tango 16 route