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Guide to crossing the Atlantic

by Michael Higginson Sun Apr 19, 2009 7:21 am
Guide by Iain Sealey - reproduced from previous thread.

o First things first, sign up for free to http://www.wxsupport.com

o Download the latest copy of the UK/Irish AIP SRDDOC from
http://www.nats-uk.ead-it.com
o Download arrival charts for your arrival airfield.
In your case for Denver its either a Lander 5 or the Sayge 6 arrival.
o Download the current North Atlantic Track signal from
https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/qryhtml/nat.html or
http://blackswan.ch/nat/ or http://occ.ivao.ca/tracks
At WX Support:
Go to wind charts, from the drop down box, select North Atlantic.
Download the 1200 FL340 or FL390 Chart for your day of operation (eg
111200) and print the chart off.
Then click significant charts. Then get the 1200 NAT Polar Stereographic
chart and print that off.
On the wind chart plot the NAT Tracks, you can get lat and long for the
named waypoints e.g. ERAKA from your normal flight planning software
(FS Nav/FSBuild/FOC is probably the best for this)
Flights to Denver and Western USA normally use random tracks, which
are normally north of the NAT tracks, but with the current WX Scenario,
the NAT tracks are quite northerly so we can look at them for flight
planning. If the tracks in the mid latitudes, you would look for the
shortest route with least headwind component.
Due to the position of today's NAT A its in an ideal position to use to
Denver, but not really so for Los Angeles, Seattle etc.
Firstly, after plotting the NAT Tracks on the Wind chart, see, look to see if
the winds are any more favourable further north, if they are lighter, its a
bonus. The winds may also be slightly north/south, which again, is ok, at
least its not in your face.

The numbers on the wind chart are the temps in degrees below zero. If it
was a temp above zero it would be prefixed by PS.
Half length lines are 5 knots
Full length lines are 10 knots
Triangles are 50 knots
The wind blows from the speed key (triangle etc) towards the point where
the temperature digits are.
Once you have decided the best route across the North Atlantic, look up
the Gatwick or Heathrow section in the SRD and find the route from
London to that exit point. The best route may be via one of the NAT
Tracks, it maybe to the North or South of them, you decided, but my tip
is, when going to places such as New York, Chicago, Washington etc, use
the NAT Tracks, then the NAR Common and Non-Common portion to get
your route. Flights to Florida and Texas etc, do use the NAT Tracks, but
see if there is a quicker way. Flights to Florida can go direct over the pond
towards Bermuda and flights to Texas etc, can be like Denver flights and
go north of the Tracks, but never south of.
NOTE: NEVER ROUTE ACROSS NAT TRACKS, EITHER USE A TRACK
FULLY OR ROUTE TO THE NORTH OR SOUTH OF THE TRACKS.
NOTE: If using the North Atlantic tracks, make sure you use the route
that goes via the EUR RTE WEST waypoint listed in the NAT Signal for that
SPECIFIC NAT Track.
If youre not on a NAT Track or there is no listed EUR RTE WEST
waypoint, then you are free to route to that waypoint via your own route.
Remember when going over the North Atlantic, you must file every 10
degrees of latitude.
e.g. BALIX DCT 61N020W 61N030W 60N040W 58N050W DCT LAKES ....
You only need to file a DCT to the first lat/long, but you must file a DCT
whenever to/from a named waypoint e.g. BALIX or LAKES.
In the USA/Canada they do not mind large DCT segments of 200-300nm,
its the norm over there, so don't panic if you file 4 or 5 DCTs in US or
Canadian airspace.

If you use the NAT Tracks, be sure you then use a NAR (North American
Route) from the NAT Track exit point, as that is what is preferred by ATC.
(http://aeronav.faa.gov/index.asp?xml=aeronav/applications/d_afd) and
use Phillip Speers excellent instructions:
Select the relevant digital Airport Facility Directory
Click your state of choice
Click Search
Click Supplemental which appear just before the list of navaids so
you need to scroll up.
Search for NAR or North American Routes.

The NAR is a 2 or 3 digit number prefixed by a "N" ending in a letter. A

NAR is an Airway.
If you look at today's NAT Track signal it states this for NAT A:
NAR N412B N414C N416E N424E N426E N428C N432B N434C N436A
So basically, find out which one of these airways suits your route best and
use it. I have a listing of all the NARs and Non-common portions for pilots
to save them time, so they know where these NARs go.
From the End of the NAR use Directs and/or Airways which to your Arrival
fix, which ever will be the best option.
Remember that some days the winds are just crappy, so you may have to
put up with a 100kt wind in your face.
This image linked to below is the route of flight I made up earlier today
for a flight to Denver today.
http://www.geocities.com/iain_sealey/Wind_Chart.jpg
I decided to use NAT A, and that states I have to route via waypoint
NINEX, so I used this route from the SRD for flights from Heathrow to
BALIX:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
As NAT A begins at BALIX the next bit is easy:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
NATA LAKES

From LAKES I decided to take NAR N436A as it was going in the best
direction towards Denver, and it was listed on the NAT Track signal:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
NATA LAKES N436A TURDY
From TRUDY I looked at DCT segments and Airways.
The red line on the chart is via Airways the Small Blue line is 2 DCT
segments that looked good as it cut off the corner of the airways route,
meaning less miles and it was more favourable to the wind.
Which left me 2 route routes:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
NATA LAKES N436A TURDY J533 DLH J21 GEP J114 SNY SAYGE6
or
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
NATA LAKES N436A TURDY J533 DLH DCT AXN DCT HON DCT SNY
SAYGE6
Personally, I would chose the second route with the Direct segments as
the winds are better.
To compare, British Airways filed this flightplan this afternoon:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 POL UN601 MARGO UN590 NINEX UP59 BALIX
NATA LAKES N436A TURDY J533 DLH DCT KP06G DCT KD78A DCT SNY
SAYGE6
Which as you can see, is not far off what I manually plotted at Lunchtime
today.
For flights into Major east coast airfields such as BOS, JFK, EWR, IAD,
BWI, ATL, MIA, MCO etc flights leaving the North Atlantic, will fly via a
NAR listed in the NAT Signal then via a SRD Route which the FAA have
done.
This is called the NAR Westbound non-common portion, there is no
Eastbound non-common portion, but there is a ATCSCC Advisory, I'll
come to that later.

The NAR common portion is for both east and westbound flights and is
the NAR route from the inland fix to the OCA fix or vice versa, depending
on route of flight. NARs are only available in 1 direction, so you must use
a Westbound common NAR when flying westbound and a eastbound
common portion when flying eastbound.
An example flight to Washington Dulles.
After finding the best NAT Track, which for this example was NATD.
D SUNOT 58/20 58/30 57/40 57/50 LOACH FOXXE
EAST LVLS NIL
WEST LVLS 310 320 330 340 350 360 370 380 390
EUR RTS WEST ELPIN
NAR N264A N270B N272C N276A N278B N280A N282A
So using the UK SRD, Route to SUNOT via ELPIN looks like this:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 TNT UL28 RODOL UM65 TENSO
UL603 REMSI UP6 MIMKU UN563 ELPIN UN550 SUNOT NATD FOXXE
Now we find the best NAR routing towards Washington.
For flights into the BOS/NYC/DC area you are looking for NARs ending at
TOPPS, TUSKY, ALB, MILLS, BRADD, ALLEX and TAFFY.
N272C ends at ALB, so thats perfect, so we now have this for our route:
WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 TNT UL28 RODOL UM65 TENSO
UL603 REMSI UP6 MIMKU UN563 ELPIN UN550 SUNOT NATD FOXXE
N272C ALB
Then via the NAR Non Common portion we look up ALB, then find "Dulles"
as that is the name for KIAD.
That states J6 LRP V143 MULRR AML
Which means the route ends ALB J6 LRP V143 MULRR DCT AML
2 Waypoints named one after the other means DCT in the USA.

Which means the full route is:

WOBUN DCT WELIN UN57 TNT UL28 RODOL UM65 TENSO
UL603 REMSI UP6 MIMKU UN563 ELPIN UN550 SUNOT NATD FOXXE
N272C ALB J6 LRP V143 MULRR DCT AML
Easy!
When coming out of the USA the restrictions are not as bad. You can
route however you like to the NAT Tracks from most airfields, except
those on the Eastern seaboard incl FL and GA. (Chicago is not Eastern
Seaboard FYI)
Flights from TPA, MIA, MCO, ATL, PHL, BOS, JFK, EWR, BOS etc are
bound by this if your route goes via Boston airspace, if you do not enter
the KZBW ARTCC area, then its N/A.
Basically this tells you what route to fly to the NAT Tracks from New York,
Washington, Philly and south of. Boston departures, should use an
appropriate departure, and join the New York routes at the NAR Inland
fix.
Just a quick de-code:
TRACK T/ JFK.GREKI3.MARTN..EBONY.N95B.CYMON..DENDU.TRAKT
For NAT T.
From JFK you must file GREKI3 Departure, via MARTN Transition.
.. means Direct so its then direct to EBONY then via N95B to CYMON to
join NATT.
Your FPL would look like this:
GREKI3 MARTN DCT EBONY N95B CYMON NATT
Make sure you use the correct routes, routings from Newark and JFK are
slightly different.
PHL and DC/Metro (DC/METRO Means KIAD and KBWI for BA flights) have
the same sort of thing to New York.
I'm doing a much more in depth guide to North Atlantic flight planning, so
I hope this is a good start.

Notes:

Copyright 2000-2010 British Airways Virtual. All Rights Reserved. All commercial copying, selling, hiring, lending or redistribution of this document and/or its contents is prohibited without the express permission of British Airways Virtual. Any such
unauthorised copying, selling, hiring, lending or re-distribution will constitute an infringement of copyright upon which action
may be taken. For permissions, contact us at http://www.bavirtual.co.uk