North Atlantic Tracks
 

Folks,

I'm not hugely well-up on all things aviation. I just wanted to know, do all pilots in Western Europe use North Atlantic Tracks A-E?

For example, would a German, Belgian, french or spanish pilot have to go via UK and Ireland to America?

Is there not a better route via spain and portugal?

NAT Tracks
 

If you look at great circle routings they all take you rather far north if your starting point is in most of Europe, hence the NAT tracks. The tracks are adjusted every day to optimize for wind and weather. You can also fly off the tracks. If you are in a plane capable of flying above FL 430 you never need to go into the track system at all.

If you are going from Madrid to Miami you probably stay well south of the tracks on most days.

Prefer a random route myself. (with a two mile slop)

Why SLOP on a random route? Come to think about it is SLOPing even approved on a random route? I thought it was just on the tracks?:confused:

I generally like random routes at FL430, 450 and 470. Not much traffic, no worries about SLOP and fairly quiet. Except for the nasty bit of entering the neighboring tracks in case of having to go down rapidly.

GF

Hand Solo
 

Why slop on a random route? Well here's one example - Because your Eastbound Random route could be the reciprocal of the Westbound Tracks, especially if you are lateish Eastbound from the USA into the UK . I saw this happen a couple of months back after a err, discusion with one of our colleagues who really objected to sloping '"'cos we were on a Random route so there will be no-one around"...Sadly I had to resort to the "my trainset " ploy. It went quiet a few minutes later when we started to meet the dawn patrol of Westbound traffic.

SLOP?

What's that?

Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures.

http://www.nat-pco.org/nat/nat_safety_alert_v1.pdf

f

Strategic Lateral Offset Procedures, check here:
http://www.nat-pco.org/nat/nat_safety_alert_v1.pdf

Really interesting . Thanks