Qantas Flight Planning

However, this is clearly not the case in airline operations. Standard routes are flown day after day by single aircraft, with the only variables being the weather, operational factors such as Notams, company procedural variations, and the payload. Clearly a lengthy briefing is not required. Surprising as it may seem, the actual navigation of the route to be flown is the least of the factors involved since the inertial navigation system (INS) has long since taken all the fun and guesswork out of wondering just where you are.

The important issues are safety, reliability (arriving on time) and not the least, best commercial operation, ie least fuel burn.

With this in mind I approached Qantas to see if I could accompany a crew through the briefing procedure and then on the actual flight itself. The company readily agreed and I duly presented myself at the Sydney Jet Base to follow a crew through as they briefed and then flew a 747-400 to Melbourne and back as the start of QF11 and end of QF12.

On joining up with Captain Ian Lucas, who is Head of 747-400 operations and Deputy Chief Pilot, I confess I was surprised to discover that the time interval between a crew signing on at the company’s offices and push back from the terminal was, in the case of 747s, only an hour and a quarter, and even less so for the 767s where it is an hour. This includes briefing, ground travel to the aircraft, preflight inspection, and prestart procedures. The actual briefing amounted to no more than ten minutes since it was based on company standard operating procedures, noting variations applicable to that particular flight. The computer generated briefing contained all the numbers that were to be inputted to the flight management system in the aircraft for the navigational aspects, as calculated by the despatch management system.

We duly flew the trip and on return to Sydney I was given a briefing by Alan McCallum, Manager Operations Despatch on the organisational set up of his department, plus the functioning of the Capricorn Despatch Management System. The Department consists of three groups, the Long Term Planning Group, Flight Despatch, and the Operations Planning Administrator.

As its name suggests, the Long Term Planning Group, is responsible for analysis of the factors affecting each route such as navigation, route qualification of aircraft types vis-a-vis available airfields for operations (including charter), terminal operations and correlation of the flight planning system with the aircraft onboard systems. An example of the analysis process would be to determine the best slot, say out of London, where due to traffic density the best time or best fuel routes may not be the optimum under the circumstances. In addition to being responsible for worldwide publications, the Group undertakes long term analysis of the database support on an ongoing basis, and lastly, provides the link to the head of each aircraft type. At the time of my briefing the group was examining the proposed Antarctic operations which subsequently commenced on New Year’s Day. There are presently nine staff in the Long Term Planning Group.

The second group is Flight Despatch which is responsible for the day-to-day operations of flight plan preparation. The manager of this group is responsible for ensuring that flight plans are ready for crews and that any operational intelligence pertinent to the flight, such as volcanic activity, or civil disturbances which might affect operations at a particular airfield, is conveyed to them.

Face-to-face briefings are only provided at Sydney and London, at all other airports the crew is self handling in that flight plan details are provided by non operational staff. Where there are queries or personal briefing is required, this will be provided by the Duty Controller by phone. Any changes in the operational environment require that each Captain be personally briefed on the details until it is no longer relevant or becomes part of routine operations. This might entail contacting the captain at the stopover hotel well prior to the flight should a more extensive briefing be necessary.

Once airborne, information changes requiring the crew to be notified will be passed by ACARS, particularly on the long haul routes. All Qantas aircraft except the A300 are fitted with this equipment which is being used more and more as a strategic tool. Satellite communications equipment is in the process of being fitted as a part of the CNS/ATM (Future air navigation system) and this will materially improve the ground to air communication link in future. This will enable a crew to contact Flight Despatch should a flight plan diversion be required for some reason, ie air traffic control, and for the crew to receive back an amended plan to meet the new requirement.

The recent introduction of flexible tracks on the Sydney/Los Angeles route will be followed shortly by DARPS (Dynamic Aircraft Route Planning) which will enable favourable changes resulting from weather updates to be rapidly analysed and passed to aircraft in flight.

The Flight Despatch group’s main tool is the Capricorn Despatch Management System computer programme which consists of three modules. The first module collects all information relevant to a particular flight, the second collates that information, and the third module constructs the flight plan.

The first module monitors weather, Notams and operational data coming through the various circuits and directs that information into the appropriate collection facility (colloquially known as “buckets”) for a particular route. The buckets are the second module of the system, known as plan production, and it is here that the information is collated for a particular route, covering such detail as the captain’s name, departure and arrival airports, aircraft type (including sub types), weather, Notams and other operational matters, including minimum equipment lists.

The third module actually constructs the flight plan under the control of a Despatcher. He or she will run it through Capricorn which in turn, using all the current information provided, will offer a number of routes based on internationally agreed tracks as shown on the appropriate Jeppesen chart. It is at this point that the despatcher takes note of other information such as volcano activity, ATC local restrictions along the route, to select the best plan for the sector on that day.

The despatcher must have a thorough understanding of all the elements involved in constructing a flight plan and it takes a number of years to reach the required level of training. He or she must know the sources of information being provided to Capricorn and have a thorough knowledge of how the system works. Clearly an essential requirement is that they must be able to determine whether the output from the system is correct. Their knowledge is such that they are capable of constructing a flight plan manually if needs be.

Most despatchers come from an aviation background, many being pilots in their own right, hence they have a fundamental understanding of the issues involved. Each despatcher handles some 50 to 60 flight plans in a shift with a total of over 400 being prepared each day. The first shift commences duty at 2am and Despatchers commence issuing flight plans at about 5am, through to 8-9am, with over a third of the day’s plans issued in that time frame. Flight Despatch has a total of 48 staff consisting of Duty Controllers, Planners, and Analysts.

The final element in the trio is the Operations Planning Administrator who is the eyes and ears of the Company in the commercial world. He is responsible for looking at any ideas which might generate new schedules and studying them from the operational angle to see if they are practical ie; can the company’s aircraft land at the proposed airport? He is also responsible for overflight clearances, block time studies, payload studies to determine least cost routes vis-a-vis flight costs.

Overflight clearances cost in excess of $100m a year and range from the reasonable to the outrageous depending on the country concerned. In one recent case the charges were increased by 900%! The costs of overflight vary from country to country ranging from some based on the duration of time in that country’s airspace to others which are based on the weight of the aircraft. Restrictions such as one point of entry and one point of departure have a considerable effect on operations and experience has shown that a visit to the country concerned for face-to-face negotiations to resolve issues is well worth the effort.

Following the amalgamation of Qantas and Australian it was decided to bring the Australian Airlines flight planning operation up from Melbourne and to run it as part of a unified operation. Understandably, the Qantas flight despatchers thought that they would have little to learn from the domestic operation, however this proved not to be the case. Experience soon showed that domestic operations were very different to international operations, particularly when an aircraft unserviceability occurred. In international operations only a limited number of flights are normally affected when an aircraft falls over. However, with domestic operations there is a domino effect right through the day’s operations. This requires the rapid allocation of another aircraft by Operations Control, with the Crewing Resource section doing likewise with the allocation of a crew. Once this has been done and the details provided to Flight Despatch, the latter will proceed with the appropriate flight planning.

With short haul, as domestic operations are known, each despatcher constructs the pattern for the day for his allocated flight plans, based on the captains, not the aircraft or the route. The despatcher will construct a block of flight plans to cover the captain’s scheduled routes for the day. For example if a captain is scheduled to fly Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Sydney, the despatcher will give him all those flight plans out of Sydney.

With the flight plans the captain is given a package of operational data covering Notams, weather etc for the whole day. The captain will order his fuel for the first sector and then commence the day’s operations. During the day an update system is in operation which downloads from Capricorn to the domestic despatch system. The captain can then go to any terminal in any domestic airport and having logged on, receive the latest update of operational data.

After some not insubstantial teething problems running the two systems, the outcome has been the development of multi skilling of the despatchers in both domestic and international operations with an enriching of the overall system. The aim is full integration in due course.

The final part of my briefing covered emergencies, such as the sudden closure of the destination airport, or a massive diversion from the planned route due to gridlock over Europe. As might be expected all possible scenarios have been contingency planned and flight plans are constructed with diversion points nominated along the designated route. These cover all engines, three engine operations, depressurisation and in the case of the 767s all the factors involved in ETOPS.

Should a massive diversion be called for, the crew will be given a rerouted flight plan within a maximum of thirty minutes. Equally, contingency plans covering all possible emergencies at the Qantas base have been established including a centre for conducting emergency operations should the main facility have to be evacuated.

My briefing completed, I toured the despatch facility impressed with the organisation that has been established by Qantas to provide crews with all the information necessary to conduct their flights efficiently and safely.

Once again, my thanks to Qantas for providing the opportunity to look behind the scenes at another facet of their operations, and in particular, Alan McCallum for a most detailed and thorough briefing.