2 questions in one thread!

All good things must come to an end, enjoy your last couple of days in the Greek sun! It is apparently 0 degrees outside in Edinburgh atm, last night my dad said his car was reading -7!

Ren, you’re right. Maybe you should contact them yourself, seriously. It’ll sound better coming from the public 😉

AJ, same as you, I may boast about the temperatures but the only downside is I actually have to come back to the UK on Wednesday brrrrrrrrrr, where’s my coat? 🙂

Oh lucky you, it was around 24 degrees in Tenerife whilst I was over. Much prefer those kinds of temperatures to the cold snowy weather that is currently plaguing the UK! It was great seeing the snowy landscape as we landed though!

Ren that would be nice. But for this year we’re stuck with the football players (bless their hearts), I’ll mention it to the marketing team though, but I suspect it’s all down to cost.

I imagine with all the ‘doom and gloom’ surrounding the industry just now, something like that would go down rarther well… 😉

Ren that would be nice. But for this year we’re stuck with the football players (bless their hearts), I’ll mention it to the marketing team though, but I suspect it’s all down to cost.

AJ

You’ll see surprised how many will be airbourne, On Christmas Eve last year I was in the air about 9pm at night grrrrrr.
Luckily I am in Athens working, coming home on Wednesday for 3 days off 😀 (it’s 20° here btw ;))

Wouldn’t have thought there were many BE Dash 8-400s flying around late on Xmas Eve!

We see santa every year Ren, this year will be no different 😉

Santa is better equipped than us, and he has TCAS, but he struggles during an RA when it shouts “adjust vertical speed”, it’s because of the extra inertia he has due to all the presents he carries. I’ll even tell him to stop off at your house ok 😀

Hee hee, 😀

And a suggestion to your bosses, how about ditching the football players this time of year and getting some nice festive ‘Finnair’ style Santa logo-props doing the rounds for a while ? ( Ok maybe not this year…) ;):D

We see santa every year Ren, this year will be no different 😉

Santa is better equipped than us, and he has TCAS, but he struggles during an RA when it shouts “adjust vertical speed”, it’s because of the extra inertia he has due to all the presents he carries. I’ll even tell him to stop off at your house ok 😀

I’ll be tracking him on Xmas Eve using the NORAD system! I seem to remember a few years back Santa suffered a mid air collision with an FR 737!

I’ll do my best to answer any questions, I may not always know, and it may not always be true, but I’ll do my best to pass on any knowledge I have.

Do you expect to see Santa this year and does he have a TCAS system installed ? 😉

No worries mate, I’ll do my best to answer any questions, I may not always know, and it may not always be true, but I’ll do my best to pass on any knowledge I have.

Rgds

Dean

Thanks again Deano! Always love getting technical info about flights from pilots! Such an interesting and exciting job despite some pilots I have heard not agreeing with that statement!

AJ

On a normal submitted flightplan there are no slots, a slot is an ATC generated device to regulate the flow of traffic through it’s airspace, invariably (but not always) this slot will come from enroute somewhere, for instance, sometimes we are slot delayed out of Dublin when flying via STU (Strumble Head West Wales) Airway L9 to BCN (Brecon), the reason being is because this is the gateway to oceanic entry points for crossing the atlantic. So it is London who are restricting our departure from Dublin so that there isn’t saturation of aircraft in that sector at the time we are supposed to be there.
Under normal circumstances we won’t get issued a slot, sometimes we get one going into Paris, our departure time (off blocks/Schedule) is say 05:30, they’ll slot restrict us by issuing a time of 05:50, in reality this is only 5 minutes late, because we can be airbourne at 05:45 meaing we can push at 05:35 because it takes 10 mins to push/start yadda yadda.

What you describe is a perfect example of a slot time being moved forward. The restrictions on slots are airbourne no earlier than 5 mins before and no later than 10 mins after. This is why we have to have the pax on board.

Rgds

Dean

Hey Deano and indeed all other respondents!

It is great to hear about how slots work from a pilot! Accurate info guaranteed!

I just assumed that if FR6622 is scheduled for a 12:05 departure that’s the slot that it will have unless it misses it due to delay then as I have heard on ATC planes can be stung with lengthy delays. Our captain, who was not the usual 20 year old captain that FR are famous for in my books, told us that our slot was 90 mins later than scheduled, and after the groan from all the passengers, he said that in practise there was no way we were going to wait that long as he had put in said “ready message”. Indeed he then said that the slot had been brought forward to 30 mins late!

Also interesting to be corrected on the flexibility of slots I assumed that your earliest airborne was 10 mins before the slot not 5 mins!

Regards

AJ

Q2.

Your slot time is irrelevant when you talk about your schedule (as has already been mentioned). An ATC slot restriction normally comes into force due to high volume of aircraft in a certain sector that the a/c is due to fly in.
Companies don’t request a slot, all that happens is that a Flight Plan is filed for your a/c to be off blocks on schedule. If there is too much capacity enroute then a slot will be issued. This can be for a number of reasons, weather, as stated, is one of those reasons but it can be anything such as a closed airport etc.
The reason you are boarded on time is because we as pilots can put in what is called a “Ready Message”, we basically tell ATC to put in said ready message to the sector that is restricting our departure. The purpose of this ready message is because invariably a new slot time could come available when they can accept you (as capacity eases slightly), sometimes we will not get a new slot time but alot of the time we do. So incase the slot gets moved forward it’s better to have the pax on board waiting just incase the slot comes forward after the ready message has been placed.

With a slot time there are restrictions, the slot time is your airbourne slot time, and you cannot be airbourne more than 5 mins before this slot, or 10 mins after. If you miss the slot you could wait hours (which happened to me out of Amsterdam once).
You’ll normally push back 15 minutes before a sot time, 10 mins to push, start & taxi to be ready for takeoff that 5 mins before the actual slot time.

Hope this helps

Dean

My understanding is that the publicised departure time has no baring on the slot…

Doesn’t the company have to request the slot, about 40 minutes before they’re ready to leave?

Sorry if i’m way off the mark here…

Don´t know about your first question.

With regard to your second question, most likely weather related. The weather may be great on your departure field, but considering the weather lately it was probably bad at your arrival field or at least somewhere en-route. Before any flight leaves they make sure they can make the flight without putting to much strain on airports and airways. With the amount of snow the last few days the amount of movement might have been restricted.