Part 1: Preparation. Boeing 787 flight from London Gatwick to Cancun

This is the first part of a detailed explanation on what pilots do from waking up in the morning until arriving in the hotel at Destination.

I will explain what goes into the preparation of a flight to Cancun until just before arriving at the Aircraft.

The preparation of a good flight, generally starts a day before the departure, if not earlier.
The flight to Cancun is quite a regular destination for us and requires less preparation then for instance a flight into Madeira or Innsbruck.
The last two airports are quite challenging and a lot more preparation work will be required and goes into it the more challenging a flight is.

Generally the day before I fly, I make sure I prepare everything, to the point that I don't have to be worried about forgetting something the following day. Really like anything preparation is the key.

What will be different tomorrow?
A common question we ask in the Flight Deck when doing a take off briefing is:"What will be different today?".
This question applies to a lot of things in life and preparing and recognising for the possible differences on the day is a key part in being succesful and minimizing mistakes.
How often do you find yourself too late for an event or due to traffic jams when really a lot of these stressful scenario's could have been avoided (not always) by good preparation.

I prepare a flight the same as I would if I was on an exam or like you were invited for a job interview. Ie. making sure my uniform is properly ironed and my shoes are nicely polished. Making sure everything is setup ready to go without to much hassle in the morning.

Although I have to admit in daily life I am less OCD if it comes to procedure and clothing🙄 as my girlfriend reminds me daily.

Typically the day before the flight I make sure like in any other job that I set several yalarm clocks, check if I recognise any of the crew I fly with and apart from that I have a quick glance at the weather forecasts at the departure airport and destination airport.
With all of that I keep asking myself what will be different.

Good night, sleep!
Sleeping is incredibly important and although there are some people that require only 4 hours sleep, the so-called "short sleepers", many of us that think they can cope with less than 6 hours sleep, probably could be better versions of themselves sleeping more.

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150706-the-woman-who-barely-sleeps

Waky Waky!!
Following morning when I wake up, first thing I do is:"15 mins of pilatus excersises and Yoga".
Except the truth is I don't, but I would love to get into the habbit of it, so maybe I will next time 😄!

I have my breakfast and nowadays we are blessed with the fact that most of our flight preparation can be done on the Ipad, so generally I do this before going to the crewroom.

The preparation generally involves downloadin the weather/ notams (notices to airmen) and flightplan.
The flightplan is created by our operations department and they basically look at what the most optimal routing is in terms of what the upperwinds do. (Jetstreams for instance)
The shortest route in terms of distance from A to B would be the great circle route. It is the route that resembles the same route that you get when you put a string or line over a worldglobe. U will notice that line is never straight,

However due to upper winds generally moving in an easterly direction on the Northen Hemisphere we encounter Headwinds on our way to Cancun making for a longer flight then the return.

The routing generally takes us through either a random routing over the atlantic or through preselected tracks called the (OTS) track system. These are tracks that are being chosen every day to control the westerlh and easterly traffic.
Some of you may know that in the morning (UK time) and afternoon most traffic goes West and at evening and night, most traffic goes East over the OTS system.
There is so much traffic during certain hours they had to structure this traffic to control the flow over the Atlantic.

Depending on the weight of the Aeroplane which would be around 200000 kgs the flight planning system also plans for the most optimal flight levels so that the overall cost of the aeroplane in terms of burning fuel and time it takes to get to destination is maximized. They calculate a (cost index) that basically decides what speeds we would be flying in the cruise and during climb and descent.
The Operation centre also calculates a fuel figure based on all the data acquired of other flights to Cancun and that fuel is incredible accurate.

All in all pilots, being ultimately responsible for the flight, take a look at the flightplan and ask themselves:"What will be different?"

The operation centre only is capable to plan for mainly standard events (information that is directly available to them) however the fuel decision ultimately comes down to the pilots.

Most of the times we go with the fuel figure that the operation centre gives us, however there are times when weather forecasts predict possible Thunderstorms at Destination or it might be that it could be particulary busy at arrival time which might encourage us to take extra fuel.

We normally on a flight to Cancun arrive with enough fuel to Arrive at Destination make an approach do a go-around and then fly to an alternate airfield do an approach and landing + 30 minutes of holding at the airport.

Next to that we carry contingency fuel(for unforeseen circumstances) which is a percentage of the total fuel used to get from A to B and on a flight to Cancun would also be worth around 20-30 minutes of holding.

As you can see there is quite a bit of buffer build in, remember also that every kilo of fuel we carry with us mostly costs fuel, so it is in the interest of any airline to maximize profits by taking sensible amounts of fuel.

fuel decision
Pilots and cabin crew finally meet up in the crewroom, we try and setup a friendly atmosphere with each other and discuss any interesting points that came out of the Briefing.
Setting the tone is very important I think as you are spending the next 2/3 days with eachother you might as well try and get along. 😁

Eventually a fuel decision is made we ring this through to our handling agent (they will make a load sheet) and fuelers.

This all happens approx. an hour before take off, we then have to go through security (Pilot's favourite part of the job) where in the UK even though you fly an aeroplane with 60 tons of fuel onboard as working crew you can't have more than 100 ml of liquids..... But this is another subject.

We walk up to the gate, smile and say hello to the passengers and then arrive at aircraft. Next part will show an in-depth explanation to what it takes to set the aircraft up for departure to destination Cancun.

Hope you like it.