Airline weather systems

Aussie

Aussie

New Member
Just a quick one,

In the big airliners, how do pilots know what the weather is at a destination?
what about the wind velocity? Can pilots find out what the wind is doing at 34000ft?

Can pilots change FL if say, FL350 had 20kt tail, and FL 370
had 40kts tail, can they elect to fly at FL370?

Cheers

Aussie
 
Well, when we get our flight planning, we get the winds aloft for our filed altitude, and 2000 feet above and below it. This is for the entire route of flight. If we want other winds, we can datalink (ACARS) our dispatchers to give us the winds, or just call up Flight Watch. As for destination weather, for airports with digital ATIS, we can pull it up on our datalink system, otherwise we just listen over ATIS frequency.
 
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Can pilots change FL if say, FL350 had 20kt tail, and FL 370
had 40kts tail, can they elect to fly at FL370?


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Only if they turn around and go the other direction.
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Only if they turn around and go the other direction.
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Why? They are both odd thousands. Or does that not apply above FL180?


Ethan
 
Its different above FL290.

Going eastbound, its 4,000 ft. increments starting at 290.

Going west, its 4,000 ft. increments starting at 310.
 
Stevenc, Why do you say only in the other direction?

Flychicaga, The reason i was asking about the weather syst. is cause on international flihgts ive been on, the captain got a print out of the weather at Hong Kong, and we were still over Aust??

Atis wouldnt be able to be picked up that distance, so how does he get it?

Cheers
 
That stuff is typically transmitted by ACARS. You can get it from pretty much anywhere.

When an airline flight is released, it requires killing several trees to get all the papers they give the crew. Some of those dead trees contain weather information. The rest they get via ACARS (digital datalink) in flight or from old-fashioned ATIS when they get close to where they're going.

Like Chicaga said, the digital ATIS (you know, where "Computer Fred" reads the weather and runway info) can be received by ACARS on aircraft so equipped in addition to being transmitted over the VHF frequency.
 
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Stevenc, Why do you say only in the other direction?

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It was a funny (although not very). FL350 is westbound, FL370 is eastbound. (see other posts above)
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That'll all be changing when RVSM (Reduced Vertical Seperation Minimum) comes into play. Then it'll be 2000 foot intervals just like the lower flight levels. Then FL350 and FL370 will both be the same direction, and they'll start using the even numbered flight levels above FL290 for opposite direction.
 
The weather is digitally fed. Today, I pulled up Milwaukee (MKE) weather on ACARS while still on the ground at MDW to see what the airport was reporting at that moment. Definitely not in range of the actual frequency.
 
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