QANTASVIRTUALAIRWAYS

The Downunder Connection

QVA Flight Planning Office

| QVA Home | Company NOTAMs | New Pilots | CFI | Fleet data and downloads |
| Pilot Roster | Bids | Reports | Routes | Destinations | Schedule Browser | Pilot Reports | Pilot Statistics |
| The QVA Club Lounge |

Here you will find helpful links and tools to assist you with planning your QVA flight


Warning:  Information on this page is intended for PC simulator use only. Do not use for
                   real world navigation. It may be outdated, unreliable or entirely wrong !


For your convenience, TracyShiffman has made these 2 handy sheets.  One is for your flight reporting and one for jotting down those ATC directions.  

flight reporting form

clearance strip form

This one from was devised by Sean Spackman for your convenience

QVA Bid and Report Form

This xcel spread sheet is by Matt Sneddon

Flight Planner sheet

ROUTE PLANNING

A must have route planning guide.  Follow the link

Route Planner

 

BASIC AUSTRALIAN FLIGHT RULES

and

International Virtual Aviation Organisation

Which has extensive navigational data and information, airport maps, current Sids/Stars and also has an online controlled ATC environment for your perusal

Australian Air Services

 Australian Government site which has everything from sid/star information to enroute charts

Aerodrome and procedure charts

But use this one for your SID/STAR information and procedural questions at any aerodrome


 

The following aspects of simulator flight planning are discussed in this page :

 Aircraft familiarization

Routine flight planning:

 Weather
 Route
 Fuel
Planning a flight is part of the fun. You get familiar with airspace structure and the weather characteristics of various regions worldwide.
Once in the air, you may become very busy handling the aircraft and good preflight planning will reduce your workload in the cockpit.

Aircraft familiarization:


Pilots, that are new on a specific type of aircraft need to familiarize themselves with theoretical and practical aspects of operating this type.
This may also apply to pilots, whose skills have become rusty after an elongated leave or a period of flying other types.

Aspects to consider:


Note:  For the time being, QVA hasn't agreed on specified company checklists or procedures to be used by its pilots.
 

To help with getting familiar to a new type, an old QVA friend Owen Robinson has prepared a page, that gives a technical overview of the types in the QVA fleet for quick reference. This document is recommended for beginners seeking fast advice to get started :

QVA  aircraft  speeds and weights -  Quick Reference for beginners
 

An additional beginners collection of data sheets and checklists for the QVA fleet was prepared by David Doyle, QVA28.
Download beginners checklists here

And here is, what a real checklist for a CF6 powered Boeing 747-400 could look like. You need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to see this document.
B747-400  sample checklist             This document was published by Marc Brodbeck in the Aerowinx forum.

B747-400 Vref, limits and callouts    A loose collection of data about Vrefs, speed limitations and standard callouts ....

An idea, what could happen during a type rating checkout flight can be found in this document :
What to expect during a real B747-400 type rating or proficiency checkout flight  (text courtesy of B747-400 pilot Jim Brennan)

Weather planning:

Before even selecting a route for the planned flight, a weather briefing is necessary.
The weather briefing may affect your choice of the routing, as well as your choice of the alternate airport(s) for the planned flight.

So, the first step in preparing a routine flight should be a visit to the  QVA - MET Office  to obtain a weather briefing.

Route planning and Navigation :

The next logical step after a weather briefing is to determine the route, that will take you to your destination. NOTAMs are bulletins issued by ATC. They inform about irregular events that affect air traffic, such as construction work in progress at airports, navigation aids out of service, closed taxiways or runways ... maybe difficult to understand for a beginner, but it's fun trying to decode the messages.

Get real world NOTAMs from Airservices Australia here ........... you must be logged in to gain access to NOTAMs

 

More cornerstones for your route planning:

Normally information about the active runways is broadcast on the ATIS frequency. An easy first guess is, that the active runway will more or less point into the wind. If ATC is changing runways, after you have already prepared your departure route, etc, you may have to react quickly and redo parts of your paperwork ...

If you're looking for airport ground maps, you can find one for Sydney on the respective Airservices Australia  page and many others at the East West Virtual Airlines page -  all in the SID chapter right below.
 

SIDs are precise instructions, how to climb from the departure runway to the navigation aid or waypoint, at which the flight joins the airway system and begins the cruise climb or the enroute portion of the flight.

They help ATC to separate arriving and departing traffic by channeling the outgoing stream of  planes in a predictable way.

SIDs aren't used everywhere. At some airports, it is mandatory, to fly a SID, at some others it is optional. Again at other, mainly smaller airports, no SIDs are published at all.

Sometimes a SID comprises a very complex route, while other SIDs just require one turn after departure to the next waypoint. In most cases a SID contains route instructions and altitude limitations.

Here a few links to the Airservices Australia pages offering SID/STAR charts for downloading :

Sydney SID information
Brisbane SID information
Melbourne SID information
Perth STAR information
Cairns STAR information
 

Ideally, an aircraft would follow the shortest line from point A to point B - the great circle line.
The reason, why this is not always happening, is, that other planes are using the same airspace and have to be kept at a save distance from each other.
Also the military claims huge chunks of airspace for exercises, weapons training etc, so civilian planes have to avoid such areas.

Airways are air navigation routes, that follow a sequence of radio beacons or coordinate defined waypoints (5 letter waypoints) to connect regions of a continent or worldwide ... They are normally designated with one or two letters and a number.

Before an IFR flight gets airborne, an ATC flightplan is filed, normally by the airline's dispatch office, that notifies ATC of the intentions of this flight.
This flightplan may contain a route, such as 'IDSAK R214 ISBAN'  which simply means, that plane intends to follow airway R214 from waypoint IDSAK to waypoint ISBAN along the published reporting points of airway R214.

The location of these reporting points can be taken from enroute charts or route facility charts (RFCs), published by many governmental or private agencies.

Airways help to define a flight route for ATC, but there are many cases, when a commercial flight won't follow an airway, but a route defined by individual waypoints. The rules governing this are complex and won't be outlined here.

There are some enroute resources available on the internet. However it is highly rewarding to own a set of enroute paper charts for the regions that you want to fly over with your simulator.

Please consult the links in the 'other links' section below for more enroute information outside of Australia.
 

STARs help to channel incoming traffic from the airways network towards an airport. They are interwoven with the SIDs and most of what has been said above about SIDs goes for STARs as well.

Please consult the links in the SIDs section above for Australian STAR information.

Please consult the links in the 'other links' section below for STAR information outside of Australia.
 

Approach procedures describe precisely, what to do, to get from the Initial Approach Fix  (IAF), a radio beacon or waypoint somewhere in the approach sector, to the runway. Depending on the means of navigation used you will find ILS, VOR/DME,VOR,NDB/DME,NDB or even GPS approaches.

Their basic purpose is to get the flight safely below the cloud base while ensuring obstacle clearance .

In good weather, even at big international airports, formal instrument approaches may be replaced by simple VFR patterns, to increase traffic capacity.

Hint: On some websites, instrument approach information is referred to as IAL (Instrument Approach and Landing) information.

Other links   that you might find helpful for planning your route :

Great circle flight path display  On this site you can plot great circle tracks and determine great circle distances. Simple, but useful for initial route and fuel planning.

The Atlantic mailing list      If you fly the North Atlantic, you may find the daily changing NAT track bulletins here.

Check the latest AIRAC cycle database update

Route finder

 

Fuel planning:

Download this handy program that will calculate your fuel requirements for your designated aircraft and route distance. FUEL11.zip

Fuel consumption of an airplane is highly dependent on its actual weight, altitudes flown and temperatures at those altitudes. The larger the plane, the wider is the range of its possible fuel flow figures. Therefore every real world aircraft operating manual contains extensive tables and charts, that deal with this problem.

The total fuel load necessary to safely conduct an airline flight, normally splits up as follows :

Fuel consumption is stated in kgs/h, lbs/h, liters/h, US or imperial gallons/h. This depends on aircraft type and company policy.

APDLS automatically converts the fuel figures stated by the pilot in the flight report to metric tonnes.  Pilots only have to check the proper box in the flight report form.  QVA fleet aircraft are all turbine powered, be it jet or turboprop, and therefore use kerosene (JET-A, JET-A1 or whatever is available)

Fuel planning links:    (yes, i hope to expand this section, as time allows ..)
 

 A simplified B744-400 fuel flow table at optimum altitudes