Life east of \”30 West\”

This is going to be the ‘condensed version’ so there may be large parts missing.

On my first “TOE” of “trans oceanic experience” trip, I’m flying with another user from Jetcareers (Staplegun) and my actual training captain named Bennie on a trip from Cincinnati to Paris, France.

The first day of the trip, Staplegun and I meet the captain in the briefing room where we go over the ground rules for the flight, and an introduction to what’s expected and what’s going to happen on an international flight that are different than what happens when on a domestic trip.

We go over NOTAMS, alternate weather, NAT messages (North Atlantic Track) and plotting charts.

There aren’t any airways between the US and Europe so each day, all of the ‘powers that be’ decide on east and westbound tracks and assign them for aircraft flying between Europe and the United States. Since they vary from day to day, we’ve got to manually plot them on a plotting chart according to latitude and longitude for reference.

In a nutshell, the US will control everything up until a track “entry point”. Then the NAT system, which may be “Gander”, “Shanwick”, “Santa Maria”, etc control the ‘in between’ before you start working with a class-I (ground based NAV) airways again.

We also print out CDG-specific “best practices” guides which are meant to give you a ‘heads up’ on the operations at the airport in France.

Speaking of France, they’re very difficult to understand on the radio because of the accent. yes everyone uses English, but it’s not the garden variety of English that you’d hear in Nebraska, it’s a hybrid.

Anyway, we finish up the plotting charts, I have a short chat with Kristie who is joining me on the trip and H46Bubba who came to see us both off. At this point, I’m so overwhelmed with international ops stuff and pretty much scared to death so the conversation is pretty short.

We meet the rest of the crew at the gate, introduce ourselves and head down to he aircraft.

Basic preflight, loading A LOT of navigation data into the FMS and cockpit prep. If workload on a scale from 1 to 10, domestic might be a 7, but international-wise, at least at this point when I’m completely fresh to the concept is about about a 15 or 20. Yup, it’s really that different.

Here’s a little known fact that you might not think about. A very important part of the preflight are the lavatory tanks. You’d be surprised but according to the training captain, the #1 reason for inflight diverts over the Atlantic are full lavatories so they take it deadly serious that they’re properly preflighted.

Takeoff and initial climb are about the same as domestic, but a little later in the flight, we do navigation accuracy checks before entering the track system.

Luckily, we’ve got an aircraft with HF, SATCOM and FMC so before we enter the track (”no more than 90 minutes prior and no less than 30 minutes prior) we get out clearance to enter Gander’s airspace and join our transatlantic track towards Europe.

At this point, I’ll readily and without ego admit that I’m completely overwhelmed because the training that we did during Long Range Nav school was pretty damned inadequate and poor Bennie has the burden of having to more or less teach procedure, monitor my performance, and act as PIC.

At this point, Staplegun’s already back on break!

Most of the North Atlantic Track system is spend doing “waypoint procedures”.

Waypoint procedures are things like as you approach an Atlantic Waypoint, you’re confirming the next point, mag headings, zone times, zone distances, then as you pass it, you’re reconfirming the new course, recording “HOWGOZIT” reports and doing position reporting to the controlling agency if you’re not in an FMC jet. Plus, “post position reports” to ensure you’re where you think you are and that your navigation hasn’t taken a dump on you.

It happens. Trust me. You WILL do a carpet dance, if you’re lucky, if you stray off track because of your IRU’s drifting. If you’re not lucky, you’ll probably hit another aircraft.

In the next few hours, we go through lots and lots of briefing items from the TOE guide and the captain says: “I’m tired of talking, you need to eat so go ahead and start your break”.

Eating on an international flight is strange. First, our rest seat is in business elite, which is nice, but there is more food than you can possibly shake a stick at.

“Do you want the appetizer? how many?”

“Soup? Salad? Both?”

“Beef? Chicken? Lamb? how many?”

They literally throw food at you from the moment you’re doing a cruise climb, up to the top of decent at the next airport. You have to really be careful so you don’t end up a member of the ’spandex/strech waistband club’.

After my break was up about 2 hours later, it’s back to the cockpit and the captain starts his break.

I had a good chat with Staplegun about how overwhelmed I felt with the international procedures but he said it just takes practice and a couple of “crossings” and it’ll feel like second nature. I order a cup of hot water to have a little Tazo green tea to snap me back into place.

I also jokingly tease Staplegun a bit because I think it’d ruin my macho if the website knew that I have a thing for green tea if he mentioned anything!

Fast forward a bit and we’re descending for Paris.

There are a lot of RNAV arrivals into airports in Europe so you often don’t deal with many vectors, but many ‘cleared direct to’ procedures. I do have to admit that my stress level is a little high because not only have I only flown a “real 767-300ER” once during my domestic IOE, I’ve got Staplegun, a training captain, my wife, and a flight attendant that went on and on about how bad the last landing was with the other trainee.

The pressure is on.

Surprisingly enough. I grease it on.

I wasn’t expecting it at all and it came as a big surprise to me, but the nervous flight attendant congratulated me, the crew congratulated me, Kristie was ecstatic and it felt really good to have done such a good landing. To this day still don’t believe it.

At Paris, the terminal that collapsed and killed a few people is the one that we park at so we’re using a ‘hard stand’ and a bus to deplane the aircraft. Fortunately, our crew bus pulls right up to the airplane and we’re shuttled directly from the aircraft right to the crew hotel in downtown Paris near the Eiffel Tour. Unfortunately, by the way the system works, we can’t let Kristie ride with us so she rode the RER to the hotel.

I went from ecstatic and energetic to dead tired and asleep in about 20 minutes after reaching the hotel. In fact, I didn’t even hear her knocking at the door once she arrived. Geez.

Later that evening, the tradition, at least with our crews is to head to the Monoprix (a French grocery chain), pick up a couple bottles of ‘cheap wine with the prettiest labels’ and an appetizer to share in the crew room before we split off in groups to find dinner.

Needless to say, I think I’m going to enjoy this international thing. Lots of fun, camaraderie from the golden years of airline flying and like a big family.

I think I’ve done my last domestic trip for a very long time.

Long story short, Kristie and I and the rest of the crew got back from a KILLER French dinner about 0030.

But we’ve got one more day of a layover in Paris! I’ll type some more tomorrow about how the rest of the trip went.

Thanks for reading! Seriously. If YOU are not reading, I’ve got no motivation to write about this stuff.

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