Metric system in China
 

Hi guys
I understand they use km for distances
meteres for alt, elevation and height
km per hour or meter per sec for speed and wind speed

What else do they use that is quite different from the rest of the world?

can anyone please shed some light on this matter

THanks

ching chong cheng
 

the language :rolleyes:

They also use height in metres QFE below trans level.
Be careful there.

In some places you will be kept strictly on Airway Centerline, no matter how BIG that CB in front of you might be:ugh:- lots of military activity around!
Forget about direct routings, you will find yourself doing 90 right and shortly 90 left turn overhead PEK:ugh:
Some ACC will tell you to fly 1, 2, or 3NM right of Centerline (to avoid TCAS on crossing traffic).
Fly your metric RVSM level based on your feet altimeter, with the help of a conversion table, since on Airbus or Boeing, the corresponding metric setting might be slightly off. You will find that in your NOTAMs.

Neehow= good day
cheche= thank you

I'm told that the blocker is the military, in that they only have metric instrumentation: ATC & airlines would be quite happy to go to feet/NM.

China is not the only country with metric units. The whole former USSR does it. Most of former Eastern World did it.

We flew only to Southern China. There you don't have kilometres. Possible that only our charts where recalculated, but they where in NM.

ATC around Southern China (Guanzhou - Hainan - Hongkong - Xiamen) is quite good. Very professional staff, of course not the same as here but not too bad compared to some other Asian countries.

Dani

Been there a few times I think the ATC generally is quite good and professional, they sometimes speak chinese to each other but that's not as often as French speak in French, and their vectoring is better than many places I have been in the world that includes many european countries.

I've been to a few places in China and never seen that. But for sure it's done in places like Uzbekistan, etc.

That, I am afraid, is plain wrong. They use metres QNH below transition level!

Depends. The military use QFE, so if you operate to a joint civil/military airfield such as Dalian, you will be told to fly on QFE.

Qfe/qnh
 

It is indeed QNH (at least at the bigger intl airports). Thanks for the reactions :ok:
(they must have changed it without telling me)

Their RVSM FL's are different from anywhere else.

Nanning is QFE only as well. Somewhat important to know :eek:

Simularly QFE is used by the military in the UK and France.

Bart

But if you operate into somewhere like Brize Norton, you will be given the option of using QNH. Some airlines ops manuals forbid the use of QFE - my previous employer was one and they frequently used Brize for base training.

My airline doesn't have QFE as a PIN option, so with an airfield such as Dalian, we adjust the altitude set in the ACP window to give the equivalent height. And if we are flying one of the fleet with an additional standby metric altimeter, we set that to QFE.

Kunming is combined civil/military and at 6200' elevation, the QFE values are pretty low! But civil operators use QNH there.

There are many differences between the Jeppesen and the CAAC (Chinese only) SID STARS and flight routes. If use the Jep's desission heights are different to CAAC, some approaches in the CAAC have slightly different name (Hangzhou G 1D and G11D same approach but different names depending looking at Jep or CAAC STAR) Some runways are not in the correct place, ie when parked at Dalian the runway is behind you but shows infront of you on the display. When flying some airways, they are not even included on the Jep charts, but are showen on the CAAC Maps. Thats to name a few..............................

That is because to fly in their METRIC RVSM airspace you must fly in FEET using the published conversion table. You cannot fly in METRES as it is not a direct mathematical conversion.
The controllers also use a table to convert the metric Mode C readout on their screen to the correct cleared metric flight level.
Clear as mud?

P.S. They certainly do use KM to measure distance when applying radar separation. Normally 10KM is minimum radar sep. Other times 30 or 75 KM will be applied for flow purposes.

To be fair, China complies totally with ICAO requirements regarding their use of SI units

The most ICAO non-compliant country is probably the USA.....

China is the least compliant country that I have flown in to date, no thanks.

Yep...
 

Here we go again.....