Dispatch Release

sorrygottarunway

sorrygottarunway

Well-Known Member
It seems with these early morning shows, my thoughts start to wander, and wander, and wander...

My goodness, our dispatch release is really LONG! Being that I am home now for the rest of the day with nothing to do until tomorrow morning, I thought I'd measure it. 9ft long!

Just a note, my target area-rug is 8ft long.
 
9 Feet!?!

What in the world is on there?

At Frontier the release was standard two pages when I got it and we were always mad because the 2nd page just had two lines on it so it wasted a whole page of paper.

We had a saying that when Frontier flies, another tree dies, but 9 feet takes the cake.

You must have more than just the release on there right?
 
FlyWhiteSox said:
For those of us who are not familiar, what information is included in the dispatch release?
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Ours had, names of pilots, what aircraft and equipment, several different weights, suggested amt of fuel, MELs (this was rare), FA names, expected route of flight, times, alternates, ummmm few other things but that was about it.

In my job, I took that info, and tailored it to the specific flight and decided how to load the airplane depending on how many pax/and cargo we had. I then I cut back on the fuel so we are not using fuel to haul unneeded fuel. Usually the pilot would call up after that and ask for more fuel though. Sometimes I let him decide if he wants to take more fuel instead of people's bags. This could get interesting at times actually.
 
FlyWhiteSox said:
For those of us who are not familiar, what information is included in the dispatch release?
Click to expand...

The releases at Piedmont are just as long.
They contain a lot of info...
names of crew, filed route, N#, flight #, prefered fuel, min fuel, holding fuel, alternate fuel, destination, alternate, taxi fuel, all the weights such as BOW, min fuel, T/O data for every runway, landing data for every runway, the weather including TAFs METARs FAs SIGMETs AIRMETs and there is probably more...
 
In addition to what Flying Turkey said ours contain winds aloft, info about the airport we are going to and any alternates (freqs, NOTAMS, door codes) and a weather synopses. We had a TO and two landing alternates the other day. I counted a 22 page package.
 
and weight limits for each runway, as well as reduced power takeoff charts. Don't forget all of the notams for your departure, destination, and alternate. If thats a class B airport, they are usually quite numerous.

Think of it as something similar to what DUATS cranks out when you ask for a standard briefing.
 
You should see ours at JB... The other day we had one from the cockpit to the aft lav on a 320 (no kidding!). For a paperless airline we sure do use a lot!!!!!!!!
 
comparing that long slip (like US Airways has) to what Southwest uses...two 8.5X11 papers. and please correct me if i'm wrong; im basing this info only on what i have seen.
 
JBUCREW said:
You should see ours at JB... The other day we had one from the cockpit to the aft lav on a 320 (no kidding!). For a paperless airline we sure do use a lot!!!!!!!!
Click to expand...

Must have been alot of Notams that day eh?
 
After seeing this tread I counted the release at work this morning. BGR-CVG was 19.5 pages (18 feet long) with no alternates. I have a couple floating around my place from when we accidently printed two. One of the COex releases is 19.5 pages the other is 17.5, My shortest is a Comair one to BOS which is 13.5.

Colgan's are pretty short comparitively.
 
I just don't understand how they can be that long. Sounds like this could be a place where airlines could save a bunch of money. Paper and ink in expensive when you use that much.

Southwest and Frontier seem to have the right idea with the two pages.
 
Comair does not have ACARS, so paper is the only way to get the info to the pilots. XJet and Pinnacle have ACARS so they could do a 2 page release, however they don't do it.
 
Timbuff10 said:
I just don't understand how they can be that long. Sounds like this could be a place where airlines could save a bunch of money. Paper and ink in expensive when you use that much.

Southwest and Frontier seem to have the right idea with the two pages.
Click to expand...
They probably aren't including the weather and t/o and landing performance on there.

You must have 2 actual dispatch releases (one for the cockpit, one for the CA to sign and give to station). So there's two pages. The weather is normally 1-4 pages, and the t/o and landing data can be anywhere from 1 page to 10+ depending on surface conditions, # of runways, etc. I'm guessing JB and SW use the "paperless" cockpit and use laptops to figure out t/o and landing data (referencing the SW a/c that ran off the runway in MDW recently).

If US Air would purchase some cheap laser printers they could shave 5+ minutes off printing each dispatch release. Those old ribbon type printers take FOREVER to print 6-15 pages!!!

~wheelsup
 
sorrygottarunway said:
It seems with these early morning shows, my thoughts start to wander, and wander, and wander...

My goodness, our dispatch release is really LONG! Being that I am home now for the rest of the day with nothing to do until tomorrow morning, I thought I'd measure it. 9ft long!

Just a note, my target area-rug is 8ft long.
Click to expand...

That brings back memories. I had an agent in ORF ask me one day what we used all that for. I just smiled and told her to fill up the trash bag.

Glad you like Colgan. There are some really good people there. However, unfortunately, the reverse can be true with some people. Best of luck and enjoy the SAAB.
 
Wow, I thought everyone used ACARS.

Our t/o and landing data was usually just a few lines on the release.
 
Due to ACARS we are down (or will be soon) to just a few lines for the TO/Landing data. It will just show it for our assumed configuration/weight/runway condition/and runway. In the past we had data for a range of weights, temps, runways, conditions etc. The TLR (takeoff/landing report) could be 5 or 6 pages on it's own.

And not everyone has ACARS, and those that do have ACARS don't actually always use them to full potential. Example, we only started doing W&B over them recently and still can't get weather other then METARS. We also can't get PDCs yet.
 
We have ACARS now, but only for out/off/on/in times, and half of those don't work :). We're supposed to go with full-blown ACARS soon, though, hopefully cutting down our release packets.

My standard release in ORD is 14 pages. Two pages of release for me, two for Ops, then 10 pages of weather, weather, weather, NOTAMs, takeoff data, and some other random blather. If they'd learn how to use a smaller font, it'd slice it down to about 8 pages.

Shortest release I ever got was about 5 pages, and I thought something was missing. Twas a very small font making that possible, that and only two runways for departure. Longest one was from SBA to LAX ... it was 34 pages long. I saved it for awhile, but finally shredded it about 4 months ago.
 
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