What if you don’t have a company route or flight plan, or need to plot an alternate (RTE 2), or got something off of one of the popular internet sites like simroutes?  Or maybe you just wish to play with the FMC some more?  If you can find a route online, you can enter it in your RTE page.  Such a route (from Atlanta to London) may look something like this:

AHN J208 HPW J191 RBV JFK PUT EBONY N123A YAY NATW ODLUM UM17 DEXET UP979 DEVOL UN546 STU UP2 NUMPO Y3 BEDEK

You may recognize the three-letter navigational aids or the five-letter intersections, but what are those strange J208 or UM17 or UN546?  Those are airways, the highways in the sky used by high-altitude traffic.  If your navdata includes them, you can put them in your FMC and all the waypoints along the way will automagically be added to your LEGS page.  Let’s see how this works.

KATL goes in as origin, and EGLL as destination.  Go to page 2 of RTE 1.  Type in AHN at Line 1R, followed by J208 in Line 2L and HPW in line 2R.  In the VIA column on the left, you should see DIRECT at Line 1 and AHN in the TO column.  This is because you have not designated an airway to follow to AHN.  That’s okay.  You should also see J208 in the VIA column and HPW in the TO column.  Here we have an airway (J208) and a “destination waypoint” (HPW).  Think of the airways as segments of the interstate highway, and the “TOs” as exits.  You’ll notice that when a waypoint is input, there is going to be a new airway on the next line in the left column.

Next put in JFK at Line 4R, right under RBV.  Don’t put anything in the VIA line to the left.  Notice how “DIRECT” appears on line 4L.  That’s because you’re just flying directly that next waypoint without paying attention to an airway.  Go ahead and put In direct to PUT.  How would you do that?  You would simply insert it in Line 5R, right under JFK.  What happens if you are suddenly presented with two or more PUTs to choose from?  The first one should be the closest, and, therefore, the correct one. ( One of the things we’ll do when we STEP through our waypoints on the LEGS page while looking at the PLAN display is to make sure all the waypoints we’ve entered make sense.  If you find a 2000 nm leg going off in some other direction, you have probably picked the wrong one.)  Note how “DIRECT” automatically appears to the left of it.  When you run out of lines, hit the NEXT PAGE key and continue for as long as you need to.

Continue with EBONY direct after PUT, and then YAY via N123A.  Then put in NATW.

What happened?  Did you get a “NOT IN DATABASE” message?  NAT stands for North Atlantic Track.  W is the designator for a particular one. These are transatlantic aerial superhighways that use longitude and latitude.  They change all the time, depending on winds aloft and other weather.  But if you are using NAT Whiskey, you’ll need to know what the waypoints are.  Otherwise you will cross the whole Atlantic without a single waypoint!

Where do you find NATS?  Go to

www.notams.jcs.mil/common/nat.html  

My browser doesn’t like that site, but go ahead and reassure it that there is nothing nasty awaiting.  Then look for W.  Today I find a problem.  W jumps off from a final leg of DOTTY to CRONO, not EBONY to YAY.  This is where your North Atlantic  / Mid Atlantic Plotting Chart comes in handy.  What’s that?  You don’t have one?  That’s okay – this time.  But if you’re serious about flying the 767 across the pond as realistically as possible, you’ll want to invest in a few.  You can buy them, and the excellent “767 Long Haul and ETOPS Guide” from www.lrops.com.  It is reasonably priced and packed with information; more than I can supply here.  You can read my review of it http://www.avsim.com/pages/0809/Book/LROPS.htm.

Looking at my chart, I find that the two are pretty close to one another.  We’ll change to Track V so we don’t have to change what we have entered so far.  When you plot on your own, you will want to take a look at your NATs early so you can plot your route to the proper exit.  With a change in NAT, we will have a different exit.  According to the daily NAT site, V ends at DOGAL and goes to BABAN.  You see 53/50, 54/40, 54/30 and 54/20?  Those are fixes you will need to enter as directs to, but not quite as given.  Instead, type in (direct) 5350N, 5340N, etc.  Your FMC will understand.   We also learn that eastward levels give us the following choices: 320, 330, 340, 350, 360, 370, 380, 390 and 400.  You would pick one of these levels to cross.

Moving to the other side, find DOGAL and BABAN. Since ODLUM is close, we’ll go ahead get back to our original route by typing (after 5420N) DOGAL direct, then ODLUM direct.  Then enter DEXET via UM17, DEVOL via UP979. STU via UN546, NUMPO via UP2 and BEDEK via Y3.

That’s your route.  Well, almost your route, because you are still responsible for entering SIDs and STARS if you intend to use them.  Pick the most natural flow to your first waypoint and to your last from among the available SIDs and STARS in your navdata.  You can even try them out first by entering them and seeing how they look.  If you are coming in from the west and your STAR looks like it starts off to the east of the airport, you probably need to change your STAR.  Hit the line select key corresponding to ERASE and pick another transition.  With practice, it will become second nature.

Now comes the fun part.  Hit your LEGS button.  Notice how there are many, many more waypoints than you entered? That’s because you just entered where you got on an airway and where you got off.  The FMC puts in all the points in between.  Switch your HSI to PLAN and step through to make sure you don’t have any unwanted excursions.  Adjust range so you can see as much as the route as you can without waypoints crowding too close together to read.  Looks like a good route, doesn’t it?

There are four ways to enter a route.  You can import a company route (if you have one; if you don't save the ones you like); you can import a flight plan; you can use FSX's surprisingly useful, if limited, flight planner to either create a route automatically, or pick your way through the map, dragging your magenta line from one navaid or intersection to the next; or, finally, you can obtain a route such as described above and enter VIAs and TOs.  If you are going to cross the Atlantic, find the most direct North Atlantic Track and build from there.  Flight planning may or may not be something you enjoy, but it is necessary.