ATIS for commercial Aircrafts (787)
 

Hi,

sorry, if the thread is in wrong place. Feel free to move it to another section.

I´m a student at a university in Darmstadt writing my master thesis about cockpit tasks. I´ve got a question I was not able to solve by reading FCOMs:

How do pilots of big commercial aircrafts get the ATIS? Do they listen to these automatical sequences provided via radio communication of the airport? Or are they able to just get the printed information? If thats the case: What do they have to do to get them? Ask for it?

If the ATIS is available in digital form (marked on LIDO maps as D-ATIS), then they can simply request it via ACARS and review it on the screen or print it if they want that. Not all ATIS are available in that format, in that case its back to the old system, one of the pilots has to switch to COM 2 and listen to the ATIS, writing it down on their electronic or paper OFP.

By the way, it probably would not be a bad idea to check out cockpit tasks first hand, not only from manuals. The bigger airlines in germany are probably willing to approve a visit on one of their flight simulator sessions or even a normal duty rotation on the flight deck, contact their flight operations and ask for that, it helps if you have a ZÜP.

Thanks for your reply. I thought of something like that.
How exactly is this done? You just press one button at ACARS an get it on the screen, or do you have to select an airport or something else first?

Also you need to have the equipment installed on the A/C too. :(

Depends on particular equipment, but not more than a few button pushes.

ACARS applications are usually airline specific programs, so there is not one single way to do it for every airline, rather quite the opposite.

For us it is on the mainscreen of the ACARS program, line select it, on the ground it is automatically pre-filled with the code of the departure airport and departure ATIS is selected, in flight it is automatically set to the destination airport and of course arrival ATIS. But of course we can switch to every other airport we like and select departure, enroute and arrival information.

Thank you guys.

Greetings from Darmstadt