733 long haul

[Tom Stian]

Hi all..

Today I decided to do a long haul with the lovely 737-300. I dont do long haul that often since I prefer shorter flights, but wanted to push the limits with this bird. 

The flight was from Las Vegas (KLAS) to Honolulu (PHNL).
Route distance is 2469nm and the flight was estimated to take 6h25min, with a average headwind of 34knots.

I really had to kick out some passengers to be able to do this flight. So the ZFW was only 38.4 tons and with 16 tons of fuel.

 

Flightplan:
As you can see I planned with CI 0 to get the max range.
The cruise level was FL360. (Step climb at HEC)
Planning tool is PFPX.

 

4h30m into the flight.

 

Soon top of descent.

 

Finally see some land

 

 

And at the gate.

 

I landed safely on 08L PHNL after 6h30m with 2.4 tons of fuel left. Just as planned. The fuel usage was spot on all the flight. 
Always interesting to see for every waypoint you pass if you are ahead or behind on fuel. But no supprises today

From vataware: https://vataware.com/flight/59883dfd5352336271000002

What is your longest flight with this bird ?

Edited August 7, 2017 by Tom Stian

[mfor]

53 minutes ago, Tom Stian said:

I really had to kick out some passengers to be able to do this flight. So the ZFW was only 38.4 tons and with 16 tons of fuel.

What is your longest flight with this bird ?

Hope your ground grew handled it better than the guys in this incident 

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alaska-airlines-mileage-plan/1021123-angry-mob-lih-737s-hawaii-really-bad-idea.html

 

Probably HAM-PMI - a bit short of 3 hours, but I do prefer shorter hauls as well.

 

 

Edited August 7, 2017 by mfor

[Litjan]

Nice writeup and shots, Tom!

I am glad to see that us extending the maximum database range for the plane is paying off!

Cheers, Jan

 

[Iain]

Hi Tom

 

Great flight and planning!  I done quite a few longhaul flights prior to 1.2, they were just under the 2000nm range, most Scotland to East coast USA, sometimes direct (when westerly winds were not blowing a gail), and sometime via the Azores.  Not really matching anything real life but fun to do.  On a couple of occasions I had to stop of to top up fuel in St Johns, but on the way back with 120kt tail winds, landing back in the UK with tonnes of fuel and about 1.5 hrs quicker than Eastbound, now I see when the NATS change daily for the winds.

Still to try a long flight with 1.2, totally forgot about the database update.  Will try another again soon.  Were there any BBJ version of the -300?  Would love to reach KBOS or NY from the UK!  I saw the Norwegian Max at EDN recently, I would love to copy it's route to Stewart, but that's wishful thinking!

[Tom Stian]

On 7.8.2017 at 10:04 PM, mfor said:

Hope your ground grew handled it better than the guys in this incident 

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alaska-airlines-mileage-plan/1021123-angry-mob-lih-737s-hawaii-really-bad-idea.html

Probably HAM-PMI - a bit short of 3 hours, but I do prefer shorter hauls as well.

Hehe.. 

Interesting reading.. 

That really could be my flight. Started with about 100 pax, but ended up with 60 pax, so I had enough fuel (and skipped ETOPS planning) 

 

[Tom Stian]

16 hours ago, Litjan said:

Nice writeup and shots, Tom!

I am glad to see that us extending the maximum database range for the plane is paying off!

Cheers, Jan

 

Its not often Im doing >2000nm flights. But very nice to have the opportunity

[Tom Stian]

Since Im on this long haul adventure I decided to do another one.. Im actually thinking of flying the whole way back to europe.

I dont have any specific route, so I just planned to continue from PHNL and to a suitable airport. Ended up with PKMJ (Marshalls IS INTL). 
Dident knew anything about that airport, PFPX was showing runway lenght of 2412m so that sounded perfect.

Im enroute now and just checked the charts and some pictures of the destination airport. And I got a bit surprised
Glad this island is wide enough to fit this airport 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by Tom Stian

[Tom Stian]

I was a bit excited about this airport. So I did record the flight from just before top of descend.

Hope you dont get motion sickness if you watch it 

 

[mgeiss]

9 hours ago, Tom Stian said:

Since Im on this long haul adventure I decided to do another one.. Im actually thinking of flying the whole way back to europe.

I dont have any specific route, so I just planned to continue from PHNL and to a suitable airport. Ended up with PKMJ (Marshalls IS INTL). 
Dident knew anything about that airport, PFPX was showing runway lenght of 2412m so that sounded perfect.

You could do the famous United flight 154 a.k.a. the "Island Hopper". If you read the Airways magazine, there is a very nice article on it in the current issue.

United flies it with a 738, but anyway... the route goes HNL-MAJ-KWA-KSA-PNI-TKK-GUM.

http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.com/2016/12/28/united-island-hopper-alaska-milk-run/

Edited August 10, 2017 by mgeiss

[mfor]

Nice. These "Alaska Milk Runs" sound fun too.

For the long legs step climbs could be beneficial - not sure if/how you could calculate that with the FMC, but it does give you the optimal cruise altitude. Still need to consider (enter?) the winds though.

The 737OM  has some tables though, so I guess you could do the math in the old-fashioned way - it'll give you something to do on those long flights if nothing else 

Edited August 14, 2017 by mfor

[Tom Stian]

8 hours ago, mfor said:

Nice. These "Alaska Milk Runs" sound fun too.

For the long legs step climbs could be beneficial - not sure if/how you could calculate that with the FMC, but it does give you the optimal cruise altitude. Still need to consider (enter?) the winds though.

The 737OM  has some tables though, so I guess you could do the math in the old-fashioned way - it'll give you something to do on those long flights if nothing else 

Ill just use the step climbs that PFPX are giving me. PFPX should consider the winds at the different flight levels for the most economic flight

My destinations so far have been:

ESOK Karlstad
EGFF Cardiff
BGSF Kangerlussuaq
CYYZ Toronto
KLAS Las Vegas
PHNL Honolulu
PKMJ Majuro Atoll
AGGH Honiara
YSSY Sydney
YPDN Darwin
WAAA Ujung Pandang-Celebes Island
WSSS Singapore
VTBS Bangkok

And now im flying to 
VGEG Chittagong
 

After VGEG I will head to the interesting airport VNKT / Kathmandu

Edited August 14, 2017 by Tom Stian

[Tom Stian]

Yesterday I was back to where I started this unplanned world tour adventure.

Very fun to just plan one leg at the time and explore destinations you would never visit in "normal-mode" simming.

And big kudos to IXEG. I had no issues with the aircraft or CTD during this tour. Only a couple of failures, so the QRH had to be used 

 

My route ended up like this. 

ESOK Karlstad
EGFF Cardiff
BGSF Kangerlussuaq
CYYZ Toronto
KLAS Las Vegas
PHNL Honolulu
PKMJ Majuro Atoll
AGGH Honiara
YSSY Sydney
YPDN Darwin
WAAA Ujung Pandang-Celebes Island
WSSS Singapore
VTBS Bangkok
VGEG Chittagong
VNKT Kathmandu
VIDP New Delhi
OMDB Dubai
OKBK Kuwait City
LGSM Samos Island
LRSB Sibiu
EHRD Rotterdam
ESOK Karlstad

 

 

[Litjan]

BGSF or BGBW? Map looks like you flew to Narssasuak instead of Sondrestromfjord. BGBW is a bad-ass airport, but I think Icelandair flies 757´s into that? BGSF is quite a big airport and ok unless you have to circle in to land westwards.

Very cool tour, and I am happy to hear that everything worked well!

Cheers, Jan

 

[Tom Stian]

15 minutes ago, Litjan said:

BGSF or BGBW? Map looks like you flew to Narssasuak instead of Sondrestromfjord. BGBW is a bad-ass airport, but I think Icelandair flies 757´s into that? BGSF is quite a big airport and ok unless you have to circle in to land westwards.

Very cool tour, and I am happy to hear that everything worked well!

Cheers, Jan

 

BGSF is the correct airport. 

Just misplaced the airport when I made the map 

I have landed on BGBW earlier. But that was with the SAAB 340A. But it could be fun to land the 733 at BGBW also.

 

[wain]

nice one, wish I had time for long flights like that......

[Tom Stian]

2 hours ago, wain said:

nice one, wish I had time for long flights like that......

I must admit that I did do some other stuff on the longest legs. So I wasent monitoring the instruments and aircraft all the time

 

11 hours ago, Litjan said:

BGSF or BGBW? Map looks like you flew to Narssasuak instead of Sondrestromfjord. BGBW is a bad-ass airport,

The funny part is.. Just after you posted this, one of the youtube channel's I subscribe on posted a video with a approach to BGBW. 

What is the chance of that 

 

Edited August 24, 2017 by Tom Stian

[st1322]

I know this topic is “old” but how did you manage to export flight plan out of PFPX into IXEG? Or are you copy paste into notepad or hand typing it into fmc? I tried and nothing works for coroutes unless I manually edit it.

[Tom Stian]

38 minutes ago, st1322 said:

I know this topic is “old” but how did you manage to export flight plan out of PFPX into IXEG? Or are you copy paste into notepad or hand typing it into fmc? I tried and nothing works for coroutes unless I manually edit it.

Hi, I just use PFPX for planning and then enter the route manually.

[Iain]

Simbrief works well, you could copy paste your route from PFPX into it and then save it as IXEG format.

About 20% of Simbrief routes give an error on loading, but it's a very simple fix, before you even try and load it, open the route with wordpad (or actually, I think you can edit it in simbrief), check that the route has not put the word "SID" after the ICAO code of the dep airport, if it has, just delete it.

ie. EGPH SID TLA6A UN864 DCS will post an error in the FMC so it should read EGPH TLA6A UN864 DC

   

 

Edited January 11, 2018 by Iain