Lost Captain Finds Way Home

Chris Trott · Post by **Chris Trott** » 27 May 2006, 01:58

Lost Captain Finds Way Home
by Ward Snavley

Newcastle

A solitary flight crew member sat in the flight planning room of Classic British Flight Services early this morning after wandering the company's routes for nearly a week. Pouring over several volumes of timetables, the pilot tried again to find his way home to London's Gatwick airport. He'd flown to Jersey, Coventry, Wevelgem, and Bristol before ending up at Newcastle last night in a vain attempt to get back to his starting point. After several times through the timetables a smile spread across the pilot's face. He'd found his way back. He would depart Newcastle in a few hours for Jersey and then be able to finally return home. It had been quite an adventure, but it was even more of one as the pilot is an American flying for the British airline to, as he put it, "see something other than American skies all the time." This past week has certainly had him seeing much more than "American skies". In only a week, he's seen some of the most beautiful countryside that Britain has to offer, one of the nicest vacation spots, and one of the smallest airports to have scheduled service in one of Britain's cross-Channel neighbours of Belgium. Relieved that he no longer had to worry about when and how he'd get back, the pilot could look ahead to his next adventure on the British Isles.

On a more serious note - this adventure of mine for this week has pointed out something. We need to get a route structure graphic put together and, more importantly, a non-FlyNET schedule put together. It's hard to tell from FlyNET at times where one flight would lead on to so that you don't spend a week running in circles trying to get back to where you started. It's one thing to look at the thread list elsewhere on the forum, but I've always found it easier to have the routes laid out on a purpose-designed page or document and ideally with a map of the flights on a particular "trip" also included to help people visualize where exactly they'll be going and how long it'll take for them to make the trip.

Post by **RAF_Quantum** » 27 May 2006, 09:47

Hi Chris,

Once all the routes are in place, I'll look into it. In the meantime it might be easier to select an individual airport on the Flightplan page to see destinations. Not all airports will be linked together which will 'force' pilots to operate a 'W' pattern to get to another airport to pick up a flight to a different destination. Once the Dove routes are in place I may (

) make it easier for you to get to another airport to pick up a different route.

Rgds

John

Chris Trott · Post by **Chris Trott** » 27 May 2006, 14:34

Well, a "W" route is fine as long as one is aware what that route is, which I couldn't figure out what the "W" route was. Are you linking flight numbers in a certain way for it? What's the methodology?

blanston12 · Post by **blanston12** » 27 May 2006, 14:51

I though we were going to have Dove flights setup between all of our hubs?

Post by **RAF_Quantum** » 27 May 2006, 15:35

Chris Trott wrote:Well, a "W" route is fine as long as one is aware what that route is, which I couldn't figure out what the "W" route was. Are you linking flight numbers in a certain way for it? What's the methodology?

Hi Chris,

A reference to a 'W' pattern flight is usually where a destination airport is served by two origin airports but an aircraft may only be based at one of the origin airports. The aircraft would therefore fly a 'W' pattern to serve both routes. For example, Newcastle - Jersey - Newcastle, and Gatwick - Jersey - Gatwick. If the aircraft is based at Gatwick, it would route Gatwick - Jersey - Newcastle - Jersey - Gatwick. In your case you just flew part of the 'W'. To a certain extent, I will have to leave it to your initiative to work out your routings to get back to your point of origin. The easiest way is to look at the flightplan page and from the dropdown menu look at what flights are served from where you are currently located and then look at the destinations served to your required destination. You plumped for Jersey, you could also have chosen Rotterdam or Beauvais.

Once I get all the routes together I'll see what sort of quick reference I can come up with but it's not at the top of my list of priorities at the moment.

Rgds

John

Post by **RAF_Quantum** » 27 May 2006, 15:44

blanston12 wrote:I though we were going to have Dove flights setup between all of our hubs?

Hi Joe,

I was looking at the Dove routings the other night and am having to rethink my original idea of flights between ALL hubs. We are currently serving 22 UK airports with our services. To schedule Dove routes between all airports is well over 400 sectors. I am looking at maybe 3 or 4 Dove hubs, fanning out to the other airports but even that is a lot of sectors. I'm sure I will devise a cunning plan.

Rgds

John

blanston12 · Post by **blanston12** » 27 May 2006, 15:54

RAF_Quantum wrote:
blanston12 wrote:I though we were going to have Dove flights setup between all of our hubs?
Hi Joe,

I was looking at the Dove routings the other night and am having to rethink my original idea of flights between ALL hubs. We are currently serving 22 UK airports with our services. To schedule Dove routes between all airports is well over 400 sectors. I am looking at maybe 3 or 4 Dove hubs, fanning out to the other airports but even that is a lot of sectors. I'm sure I will devise a cunning plan.

Rgds

John

Hi John,

I was not suggesting we need dove flights between all 22 UK airports, but I thought each aircraft type would have a single major hub that would be its base of operations. We would only need to link those major hubs.

Chris Trott · Post by **Chris Trott** » 27 May 2006, 15:55

I think we've got a difference in the definition of "Hub" and "Destination".

Hub would be between like Stansted and Gatwick and Heathrow or the like where we have at least 20 flights originating from that airport. A destination is any city we serve.