Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler

Delta Virtual Airlines Water Cooler | Airline Operations | ACARS Dispatch idea

DVA4215
Senior Captain, MD-11
OLP

Joined on March 12 2007
Everett 250 Club
Six Century Club
Online Quadruple Century Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary

Pleasant Grove, UT USA

636 legs, 1,647.2 hours
410 legs, 746.5 hours online
589 legs, 1,563.2 hours ACARS
7 legs, 10.3 hours event

Posted onPost created on November 19 2012 19:58 ET by Kyle Hatch

Evening everyone,

I got thinking during cruise recently and tried to think of ways we could add even more to the realism aspect. One idea I came up with is having dispatch assign arrival gates. For example, you'd receive everything like it is now but along with your weather and route, dispatch would say "expect gate A28". And instead of being a randomly picked gate, it would be one used by RW Delta. I think that would help the realism of our dispatch a little more. What do you guys think?

Kyle Hatch (DVA4215)

DVA8502
Captain, B757-200

Joined on April 13 2010
Double Century Club

"MOCHA HAGTDI."
Folkston, GA

251 legs, 575.3 hours
65 legs, 139.7 hours online
241 legs, 558.8 hours ACARS
2 legs, 4.6 hours event

Posted onPost created on November 19 2012 20:22 ET by Timothy Thomas

iv been thinking that to. except maby on the route plotter (or in dispatch) if it gave you the gate. of curse useing it should be entierly optional, not mandatory

Timothy Thomas

Captain, B757-200

DVA9571
Senior Captain, B767-300

Joined on March 10 2011
Everett 500 Club
Online Quintuple Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary
Six Century Club

Miami, FL USA

612 legs, 2,333.0 hours
590 legs, 2,242.9 hours online
602 legs, 2,307.3 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 09:04 ET by Bob Klemm

Or just use the Delta website or Flight Aware, and use the same one the actual flight is using.

Bob Klemm

Senior Captain, B767-300

DVA5627
Captain, B757-200
OLP

Joined on March 01 2008
50 State Club
Globetrotter
US Capital Club
Million Mile Club
Everett 500 Club
Millennium Club
Online Six Century Club
DVA Fifteen-Year Anniversary

Northeastern United States

1,109 legs, 2,998.4 hours
652 legs, 1,569.9 hours online
1,100 legs, 2,964.1 hours ACARS
27 legs, 55.6 hours event

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 09:22 ET by Matthew King

Kyle,

Good idea...I actually wrote a program that assigns gates to me. However, there are drawbacks. The system has NO idea what gates are assigned to Delta; the same would be true for our ACARS. Also, it only takes the size of the gate into consideration when assigning said gate. So, you could I assigned a military/cargo gate too. The only way to avoid this is to create a database of delta gates for each airport...Too time consuming for me....

In addition to gate assignments, I'd like to add the following to our ACARS:

1. Loadsheets - when the flight starts, after the payload and fuel are loaded, and option to output a loadsheet via .txt...
2. Rating - ACARS already consumes a lot of flight data, I'd like to develop an algorithm to interrupt said data to provide the pilot with a "score" upon landing
3. ACARS record your last position and automatically moves your airplane to that spot.

Thoughts?

Matthew King

Captain, B757-200

DVA1038
Captain, B737-800
E-MAIL

Joined on January 12 2003
Century Club

"Celer, Silens, Mortalis"
Summerville, SC USA

169 legs, 1,008.2 hours
56 legs, 288.5 hours online
25 legs, 221.2 hours ACARS
1 legs, 5.0 hours event

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 09:52 ET by Kevin Cornish

I like that idea. Make it optional, but I think that's a great idea.

Kevin Cornish

Captain, B737-800

DVA853
Senior Captain, B747-400
OLP
E-MAIL

Joined on September 26 2002
50 State Club
Tin Dispatcher
Globetrotter
Two Million Mile Club
DVA Twenty-Year Anniversary
US Coastal Club
Toulouse Millennium Club
Bi-Millennium Club
Online Twenty Century
Moose Club

Rincon, GA

2,181 legs, 6,337.3 hours
2,161 legs, 6,296.0 hours online
2,149 legs, 6,204.2 hours ACARS
2 legs, 10.0 hours event
376 legs dispatched, 185.3 hours

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 09:54 ET by Chris Hannigan

In the end it's all just data in the database. It just requires someone to input the gates and then maintain it. Seeing how Luke is retiring, unfortunately I don't know if this will ever materialize.

In the meantime, here is a suggestion for the gates... use AFCAD. Load up the destination airport in AFCAD, then get a fairly recent AFCAD file of the airport, and find an appropriately sized DAL gate for you to park at. I used to do this all over the world and it's neat having to park on the hardstand in places like India where DAL is just a visitor lol.

In regards to the loadsheets, I used to offer them with a release a few times when dispatching, and I only ever had one pilot say he would like to use it. We just have pilots who fly a different levels and I don't know if there are enough pilots who sim at that level to make it worth it. Many just use their own FSBuild or similar. Most don't care lol.

Chris Hannigan

Senior Captain, B747-400

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 18:34 ET by Timothy Thomas

our scedual come curtosy of innovata. if the info the give us includes gate info. all that is needed is a place to put it (in our scedual viewing (find a flight) page. i dont know if thats how it works thoue.

Timothy Thomas

Captain, B757-200

Posted onPost created on November 20 2012 18:44 ET by Timothy Thomas

@ Matthew

1. ive found loadsheets in the FSworld to be pointless. especialy if you print them. i use to have a excel workbook that did a dispatch sheet load sheet. and fuel slip. i lost it when my old PC doed, i have given thought to remaking it thoue. but to what end. i have FSbuild whos Navlog gives me everything i need for a flight) other than looking preety on your clipboard. why would we need a load sheet in FS.

2. not a bad idea. but it already says you descent rate and distance from threashold on landing. i think thats best that way. what if your landing on a short runway, or in a emergincy. it would suck to get a bad grade for doing what your sapost to do.

3. i think giveing you a warning that you are not a the same airport as you last landed(wich it currently does) is enoughe. after all you may not even be departing the same gate as the last flight. this one may be asking tomuch rom ACARS.

just my $0.02

Timothy Thomas

Captain, B757-200

Posted onPost created on November 21 2012 08:41 ET by Matthew King

Tim:

1. To me, and other who fly complex aircraft, a loadsheet is essential to completing FMC inputs. Like you, I have FSBuild and it does create a great dispatch report. However, now that ACARS is capable of randomly selecting and loading cargo weights, I think it would be more realistic, and convenient for ACARS, to generate the loadsheet.

2. Why limit the rating to one segment of the flight? There are so many parameters you can use to determine flight "ratings." Some minor examples: 1. Exceeding taxi speeds 2. Pushing the engines beyond climb thrust. 3. Flying through turbulent air (thunderstorm). 4. Too much, or not enough, Fuel. I could go on and on....

3. Agreed...I didn't realize ACARS did that...pretty cool

Matthew King

Captain, B757-200

Posted onPost created on November 21 2012 09:03 ET by Chris Hannigan

Take the ZFW that ACARS gives you after loading, then put that in FSBuild to generate the loadsheet for your flight. That's not much different from getting the final counts after boarding and running your own numbers like they do IRL. smile

Chris Hannigan

Senior Captain, B747-400

DVA8060
First Officer, B737-800

Joined on December 06 2009
B757 100 Club
Online Double Century Club
Everett 250 Club
Triple Century Club
DVA Ten-Year Anniversary

Swindon, UK

347 legs, 998.9 hours
280 legs, 861.5 hours online
343 legs, 986.8 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on November 25 2012 04:43 ET by Jamie Moss

Yeah I never use ACARS for loadings, you can get passenger numbers for each Delta flight at the main website, I use 170 lbs as an average for each passenger, first class pax are allowed up to 3 bags, so I use 110lbs x 3 then add the economy passengers. ie 110lbs x however many is on the flight, then manually adjust the payloads in FS9 itself for the aircraft that I'm flying, Flightaware gives you gate information and in europe if I cant get it I usually look up the airports live departure/arrivals boards for the gate information from there, Schipol for instance you can't get arrival gates so I use the departure gate of the outbound leg of the one I'm bringing in and go by that.

You can never be 100% accurate for obvious reasons, I also like to record the gates/arrival and departure times in the comments section as then to me it feels like I'm providing reports to the dispatch department, including pushback and shutdown times

Jamie Moss

First Officer, B737-800

Posted onPost created on November 26 2012 01:56 ET by Kyle Hatch

Another idea came up today. What if you could type .gates <ICAO> and a list of Delta gates for that airport came up? That would help finding what gates you should go for. Now I know my ideas here may be far fetched but why not put them out there. Do any of the higher up staff members have anything to say? Are these ideas possible?

Kyle Hatch (DVA4215)

Posted onPost created on November 26 2012 08:16 ET by Bob Klemm

Again, why not just look up the info from the Delta website, under "Flight Status", or on Flight Aware? Then, you get the actual gate being used by that flight.

Bob Klemm

Senior Captain, B767-300

Posted onPost created on November 26 2012 10:00 ET by Kyle Hatch

Again, why not have the option to look it up via ACARS? If we all went by the "just look it up" idea, we wouldn't have weather, charts, routes, online ATC, etc in ACARS. It would be nice to have it all in one place.

Kyle Hatch (DVA4215)

Posted onPost created on November 26 2012 10:23 ET by Chris Hannigan

Kyle, it's certainly a nice idea. I would suggest creating a help desk ticket for it as it's the best way to get this suggestion into the right hands.

Chris Hannigan

Senior Captain, B747-400

DVA7709
Captain, B757-200

Joined on August 29 2009
50 State Club
Quatercentenary Club
Online Quadruple Century Club

Southeastern United States

452 legs, 908.6 hours
415 legs, 843.4 hours online
451 legs, 907.6 hours ACARS
25 legs, 53.3 hours event

Posted onPost created on December 08 2012 20:51 ET by Jose Hernandez

An idea I have always had but never thought it would go well on here would be something like during an FNO have a dispatch online for like holds and for diversions so you could get the trip time burn plus if say atc is doing holds to give us a heads up and stuff like that... thats what they do real world or if the alternate is under bad weather too and you want to chose another to get the trip time and burn from your holding spot but like I said idk if we could get that real on here or not?

Jose Hernandez

Captain, B757-200

DVA10767
First Officer, B757-200

Joined on April 30 2012
Century Club
Online Century Club
Everett Century Club
DVA Five-Year Anniversary

"Stay Awake."
England United Kingdom

146 legs, 505.7 hours
115 legs, 406.5 hours online
146 legs, 505.7 hours ACARS

Posted onPost created on December 09 2012 03:10 ET by Jonathan Leung

I don't know if anyone mentioned this before, but could we have the option of having a "Dispatched" flight assignment? I log on to ACARS when I am almost ready to push, obviously I got my SB FP and FMC ready, then ACARS would say dispatcher is online...

Jonathan Leung

First Officer, B757-200

For flight simulation purposes only. Not a commercial website. In no way are we affiliated with Delta Air Lines, its affiliates, or any other airline. All logos, images, and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners. Delta Virtual Airlines is a non-profit entity engaged in providing an avenue for flight simulation enthusiasts.