Flight Paths in Weather

BeReal

BeReal

Well-Known Member
I was just watching flights on FlightAware and saw a flight path of a UAL 737 from KIAH to KDFW that kind of blew me away. At some point, the path looked like a triangle inside a five-sided polygon. It's hard to describe in writing, but that A/C did some serious maneuvering around the thunderstorms are cutting a swath through Texas.
 
Yeah, that was the one. It had landed by the time I posted the thread so I didn't know you could "retrieve" it. It also didn't have the "green" path that shows up on your link. I was looking at the blue-dashed lines thinking that was the actual flight path. Now I'm just really confused. Do you know which one is the flight plan and which is the actual flight path?
 
BeReal said:
If that's the case, can anyone look at the link above and explain the flight plan?
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Yes, looking at the filed route in Flightaware it was a required ATC re-route. ATC had BYP closed as well as other DFW/DAL transition VORs groundstopped so they were sending traffic towards Will Rogers and Gooch Springs (AGJ). ATC has a flow to maintain during bad weather and with transition VORs that had weather in short supply, you get this long re-route.
 
Flagship_dxer said:
Yes, looking at the filed route in Flightaware it was a required ATC re-route. ATC had BYP closed as well as other DFW/DAL transition VORs groundstopped so they were sending traffic towards Will Rogers and Gooch Springs (AGJ). ATC has a flow to maintain during bad weather and with transition VORs that had weather in short supply, you get this long re-route.
Click to expand...

Pardon my ignorance (I'm newly licensed), because I'm trying to educate myself. So the dashed blue path is the flight plan filed when the flight departed or the actual flight path as dictated by ATC? I can't imagine anyone filing a flight plan like this. So are you saying that the ATC, during flight, dictated that the UAL flight go in "circles" until the weather changed to allow it to land at DFW?

ATC had BYP closed as well as other DFW/DAL transition VORs groundstopped so they were sending traffic towards Will Rogers and Gooch Springs (AGJ). ATC has a flow to maintain during bad weather and with transition VORs that had weather in short supply, you get this long re-route.
Click to expand...

I don't totally understand what you're saying because I haven't worked in the field yet. It's my understanding that ATC does not concern itself specifically with whether aircraft fly into weather, although it DOES have to deal with the delays caused by dispatchers and pilots deviating around bad weather. I can conceive of an aircraft getting caught in a cluster of thunderstorms and having to maneuver around them, resulting in a weird flight path. But I don't understand what you mean by:

Flagship_dxer said:
ATC had BYP closed as well as other DFW/DAL transition VORs groundstopped so they were sending traffic towards Will Rogers and Gooch Springs (AGJ).
Click to expand...
 
BeReal said:
Pardon my ignorance (I'm newly licensed), because I'm trying to educate myself. So the dashed blue path is the flight plan filed when the flight departed or the actual flight path as dictated by ATC? I can't imagine anyone filing a flight plan like this. So are you saying that the ATC, during flight, dictated that the UAL flight go in "circles" until the weather changed to allow it to land at DFW?



I don't totally understand what you're saying because I haven't worked in the field yet. It's my understanding that ATC does not concern itself specifically with whether aircraft fly into weather, although it DOES have to deal with the delays caused by dispatchers and pilots deviating around bad weather. I can conceive of an aircraft getting caught in a cluster of thunderstorms and having to maneuver around them, resulting in a weird flight path. But I don't understand what you mean by:
Click to expand...

Contrary to popular belief, ATC does concern itself with weather and flight plans. When aircraft start deviating around weather, it clogs up routes and airspace. This reverberates across the whole system which forces ATC to manage all the deviations into re-routes. Sometimes, ATC will re-route into weather trying to elicit path finders on routes with less traffic to ease congestion.

A lot of times, you will see long re-routes from ATC or even self built, and either ATC will allow or crews will ask for and cut corners. Sometimes, ATC will widen the route and have crews do turns for flow due to traffic up ahead to maintain spacing.

Yesterday, ATC required dispatchers filing flight plans from Memphis to Dallas to file down to New Orleans then to Houston and over to Gooch Springs. In the summer, you will see lots of crazy re-routes both filed by dispatchers and given by ATC.

New York center will often ask dispatchers to file the preferred route and expect ATC to give a re-route either on departure or in the air.

ATC will often groundstop VORs that have weather and are severely constrained. This is due to increased miles in trail and the need to maintain spacing.

Today, I filed my Houston to Atlanta flights over Lufkin and Memphis to get around weather and ATC brought one of my flights from Atlanta to Houston over Mobile and then Palacios to the south of Houston and around weather.
 
BeReal said:
You have some 'splaining to do. What were you riding? Where did you go? What did you 'sperience?
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I don't know if I have splainin' to do, I just saw the news on the Saratoga crashin' near Waco and I was just flyin' in the there sooooo I guess that just kinda explains that.
 
Thanks for the explanations, Cessnaflyer and Flagship_DXer. I get the need for routing around weather, but I had no idea some reroutes are so extreme. (On the other hand, when I play appcontrolgame, I'll stop worrying about what the "pilots" are saying about my routing patterns.)
 
BeReal, the best way to see what active reroutes are being used is to use the Current Reroute page on http://fly.faa.gov. It constantly refereshes. If you have an active SITATEXT account with your carrier, you will get these advisories sent to you. I always keep my reroute page open along with OIS, when I am dispatching within the 48 states and the D.C.
 
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