Flight Planning..

Today we got some great advice from The Sheen, an Ex-RAF navigator with a broomstick moustache who eats his words as he speaks. The lesson basically boiled down to 'How to "Be" a Pilot' for the best all round gain. We all had our pens at the ready to take notes.

- "We used to get alot of allowances, for a long time I lived off only my allowances; my salaray went straight into savings. You want to learn to make the most of it! Eat and sleep on the plane, play on the ground..! You should all be very familiar with flight planning by the time you are flying. Say you are flying to the Caribbean and you run into a spot of bother, what do you do? turn around or keep going; you bloody well keep going..! If you can divert to Iceland of Bermuda, where do you divert? Of course, you divert to Bermuda. This is what flight planning is all about. Have any of you ever heard of the IsoDollar line?"

We all shook our heads to the negative.

He continued
- "Well the IsoDollar line is a line on the Earth which determines whether or not you get your allowances. And what type of allowance you get. Say you are flying across the Atlantic from London to New York, the IsoDollar line is roughly 30W; once you cross that line you get your allowances, if you don't then you don't; past 30W pay day..! So, with that in mind what do you do if you get an engine failure at 25W? That's right, you keep flying till you pass 30W then you assess your options..!"

Slightly different from the textbook..