DELee

Question: So departed out of DEN and the 10,000 ft chimes go off - is the 10,000 ft indicator relative to mean sea level or 10,000 above the DEN airport already at ~5280 ft?

David

LarryJ

It's MSL, but many pilot's technique may be to use a higher altitude at high-altitude airports, such as DEN.

HGPilot

I was on Thursday morning's United BWI-LAX flight. 737 Max 9 I believe. What's interesting is that cruising altitude according to the in flight display was only 28,000 SF the entire way.

I'm assuming that was to avoid headwinds at a higher altitude. Impressive that we could go all that way westbound at such an inefficient altitude without a fuel stop.

Am I right that this was to avoid the headwinds caused by the big storm? No announcement from the pilot.

clubord

Yes

We stay low to avoid winds and possible forecasted turbulence higher.

LarryJ

Winds, turbulence, or both.

jcturnbull

How inefficient is this, relatively, that it might require a fuel stop?

Old Gold

Years ago I was on an EWR-ORD flight in the winter that flew at 18,000 due to headwinds. The pilot said that there were 250 mph headwinds. I don't remember how long the flight was, but it was long. I've been almost that high above sea level on the ground.

UAFAM

Confirmed by Flightradar24, could be due to routing, since it didn’t go up to north

wxguy

I recall being on a DCA-BOS flight (probably EA but maybe CO) on a DC-9. We flew at 10,000' to avoid turbulence above. We were just below the cloud bases the entire way. Even though this was the early 90s I had access to good data (hey, I'm wxguy!) and saw reports of moderate to severe turbulence in the 12,000' to FL240 altitudes. Our 10,000' flight wasn't smooth by any means, but the crew managed to serve the full hot dinner to F (yeah, that was a thing back then).

TomMM

Not related to weather but I recall listening to a 'JFK Steve' video on YouTube when there was an ATC issue that prevented flights above 18,000ft. It was hilarious. "ATC: AA133 can you take 15,000 ft to DEN, AA133: HA!" etc..

F1.Cullen

Thursday: EWR-DFW took 3:50 and flew at 30,000’ the whole way due to headwinds.



Ground Speed.

lincolnjkc

I could swear there was an ask a pilot thread around here but we're being bounced around too much for me to find it.

Frequently when seated in F, particularly on the RJ fleet as we approach touchdown I'll hear thee electronic 'chrps' (deetdt---deetdt---deetdt) from the flight deck. Based on timing I've always assumed it was something like localizer/glideslope intercept or something similar.

Today on an A319 in the midst of some of the more violent jolts descending through about 16500' (FlightAware indicated) I heard the chirps twice...the first was accompanied by a quite pronounced engine spool up (sounded almost like we were in a go around)...

This makes me think that my assumption is at least partially wrong...so what is the meaning of the chirp (and why is it so frigging loud?)

Thanks!

aindfan

I'm not a pilot, but if it's the sound that I've heard (and asked about) when sitting in the first few rows, it might be the autopilot disconnect chime.

jgreen1024

It's the autopilot disconnecting. It's loud because knowing who is currently flying the plane is really important - if it disconnected because you pushed the button then fine, but autopilots disconnect for other reasons too, unexpectedly. The engine spool up was probably a coincidence. If you were getting slammed around, you may have flown into a downdraft and the human pilot or the autothrottle was trying to compensate.

econ

And the sound is different on a Boeing, IIRC.