Well you did say that you flew pressurised to ground level. So unless you were flying the Ekranoplan (unlikely) I think we wonder what the difference between your actual alt and your cabin pressure was.

I think Hikoushi makes a valid point; it's one thing and level of risk to board a pressurised aircraft as pax if you have a cold/flu etc; it's quite another when you are at the controls, and even more so when both have the same condition. Competent carriers should envisage this in their SOPs.

This is rather distracting from the point about fuel burn, but I did mention that we were very low.

Only children of the magenta line would call 20000ft or even 10000ft low let alone very low, but don't let that get in the way of the favourite sport of pilots, sanctimonious flight-safety one-upmanship.

Tell you what, you look after your cockpit and I will manage the safety of mine.

So what altitude did you choose, then? 50 feet? FL000.5? Was it FSX or X-Plane?

Again, read my post.....

Read your post. You weren't fit to fly.

......at altitude.
So we didn't fly at altitude.


I have noticed in my time as a pilot that the sanctimonious tw@ts you meet never seem to notice their own shortcomings. Everything somebody else does is important, but they always justify their own deviation from norms.

The airline was happy with our risk mitigation and fully in the loop.

Can we get back to fuel now?

No.

And back to the O.P., there are various rules of thumb for TLAR (That Looks About Right) altitude selection, depending on type. Many aircraft have charts for it as well, such as the A330 chart I'm looking at right now.

The old rule was "track mile distance divided by 10 equals cruise level in thousands of feet" plus a factor (add 5000 feet or something similar) for a particular airplane type. It works pretty well out to a couple hundred miles for a lot of types.

200 nm sector / 10 = Fl 200 + 5000 or something = Fl 250.

The Douglas/Boeing chart for short distance reveals, for a 200 nm sector:

Fl 370 for LWT to 40.0; Fl 330 for LWT 45.0; and F330 for LWT 50.0.

On this type at least, as long as TOPD comes after TOPC, all good. Mind you, the FMS will recommend an optimum cruise level that gives at least 15 mins in the cruise.

Back in 1998 I flew an almost-new, almost-empty 744 STN-CDG (~190 NM) at FL430 "because we could"... It was our first taste of the B5F engines.

"Normal" altitude for such a flight would be FL230-FL350, depending on load.

Our flight planning software for short stages (150 miles or less) seems to essentially aim for a derated climb to TOC = idle descent TOD plus a minimum 3-5 minute cruise to stage cool the engines (Not the Airbus, but the McBoeing with its BMW-Rolls Royce BR715s). Usually wind up with a longer cruise portion for longer flights, but not by much, maybe 8-10 minutes max. Typically below FL300, sometimes significantly so.