Originally Posted by
alggag
I have a technical question:
On Tuesday I flew WN961 OAK-HOU on a 737-500 (ugh
) and we only flew at 29,000 ft. Looking at FlightAware, that aircraft never went above 30,000 ft on any of the segments it flew that day with, against, and across the jet stream. I know the -300s abd -500s don't have the ceilings that the -700s have but they can usually get up to FL330 or FL350, especially on longer segments.
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/S...015Z/KOAK/KHOU
I remember seeing a thread either here or over at airliners.net that mentioned something on the MEL that allowed the plane to fly but limited to below 30,000 ft. I recall that it is something like if only 1 of the 2 (_____) is working correctly then the plane has to stay below 30,000 ft.
The MEL restriction above you're thinking of is for 1 (of 2) air conditioning packs being inop/ and that limitation is at/below 25,000 feet (FL250) for all the 737s we have.
There is another MEL item that entails flying at/below 30,000 feet (FL300), and I'm sure that's what you had.
Sometimes, ATC will also "cap" the altitudes on some shorter distance flights, especially in some high-traffic areas. For example, LAS-BUR routinely goes at 22,000 feet (FL220), the reason being that the flight is of such short duration that going to FL340 would just enatil starting right back down again. That would be not unlike getting on a freeway, going to the far left lane, and then moving immediately to the right lane to make the next exit.