Cruise

Initial Cruise Altitude

The aircraft is out over the North Atlantic on Track Charlie. It is flying at FL350 and at Mach 0.82. Due to the high Latitudes and therefore the large magnetic variation, the Navigation system has been selected into TRUE Heading mode. The Green TRUE button on the front panel has been selected and the Radio Indications on the MAP have been colored Magenta

The Oceanic clearance was given for 0.82 Mach. Since this was different to the FMGS optimized speed, the flight crew initially set the speed as selected (blue), from the FCU.

Constant Mach Segment

However, the flight crew is able to set a Constant mach segment into the cruise flight plan portion by using a vertical revision page.

For the waypoints over the North Atlantic the flight crew set a constant Mach segment for 0.82 and then reverted back to Managed speed ( Magenta) .

The crossing over the North Atlantic is made using the Extended Range Twin Operating Procedures (ETOPS). This procedure requires that the aircraft remains within a set time range from a suitable diversion airport. The time requirements vary and may be between 120 minutes to 180 minutes, as opposed to 60 minutes for standard twin operating conditions.

For this flight, the time requirement has been set at 138 minutes. The flight despatch office at Manchester has produced the ETOPS charts to correspond with that time requirement. The yellow are under the two circles shows the no - go area.

From Manchester the initial diversion is to return to Manchester, there after it is Reykjavik in Iceland and Gander

The A330-200 MCDU has a page on it to help the flight crew with ETOPS. It is called the ETP page. ETP being the Equi Time Point between two entered waypoints.

The ETP page allows the flight crew to insert a waypoint which identifies the point where prior to crossing that waypoint, the aircraft should divert to Reykjavik , there after it should divert to Gander.

ETOPS