britannia pilots

[rodger the cabin boy]

was reading a book a whileback about a flight from prestwick
to orlando 767 etops it said that first officers were reqired
to plot the route on the north atlantic plotting chart this was
a check on there plotting skills do you still do this and does the
company run nav ref coures.

thanks:)

[max_cont]

Short answer is Yes. But not for the reasons you state, and not just the F/O.

It is used to check for navigation errors. The crewmember that runs the plotting is usually the PF, the PNF does the radio and gets the weather.

At the planning stage our dispatcher or we will plot the random or NAT track and we check it against the plan and NAT track message. We check the ETP’s and check that both tracks adjacent to the route are plotted if we’re on the OTS.

In flight, we run the checks by logging on the chart the time of waypoint passage and we plot the wind. At around waypoint passage + 10 minutes or 2 degree’s, we take the Lat and Long from the FMC and plot that position on the chart. What this will show is an error in the IRS/FMC’s navigation before things get out of hand.

Britannia trains all ETOPS qualified crews in-house and you also get line training and line checked.

This I hope will answer your question. This is by no means, an exhaustive account of all our duties and procedures while operating ETOPS.

Cheers.
PS What was the title of the publication you were reading?