Airplanes R Us: The ICAO Flight Plan Form, A Story (Third of Three Installments)

(subtitle) THE NIGHT I STRUGGLED WITH AN INTERNATIONAL FLIGHT PLAN (ICAO-type)

My enclosed story has three parts… and this is the third part, so if you are missing the continuity, you may want to refer to my storyline in the EAA 430 newsletters SEPT & OCT.

This is what happens when a scheduled routine flight across the Pacific (LAX to SYD) is diverted by a weather interruption at the real destination. Crew workload goes to the max… and so does ATC activity, Dispatch activity, not to mention the diversion station activity who will be receiving our UAL B-747, and our wingtip mate from SFO to SYD… both requiring fuel.

For my part, having been awakened from crew-rest, I deemed it appropriate to command by “overview,” that is to say, I didn’t hop back into the Captain seat right away. The pair of flying crew (relief pilots) were doing a good job with ATC, Dispatch, and initiating direction and descent to new destination. I needed to sort the workload, study the approach with my copilot (who had also been resting). Also we coordinated with the cabin crew, some of who were taking their crew-rest. In the cabin, the passengers would suffer a bit of angst with the diversion announcement. Not everyone would be keen for an unexpected visit to a Pacific island. About 20 minutes before landing, we got all the flight deck crew back into the customary flying or non-flying seats. We had a pilot crew of four (one Capt, 3 copilots) which was the legal compliment for a 16-hour flight. The approach would be an arc-transition to ILS at Noumea. We were number one for the approach since our wing-tip UAL B-747 partner was now 10 minutes behind. The Noumea runway had no parallel taxiway, thus there was some pressure for us to approach, land, taxiback, and clear the runway so as not to cause grief for our colleague in the other approaching B-747.

To shorten a longer story, this all worked out fine. Eventually there was a pair of United B-747s sitting on the Noumea ramp awaiting fuel service. Since these were early morning hours, fuel truck(s) were not immediately available. That gave us plenty of time to figure out Dispatch requirements for the NWWW to YSSY flight. It was no small chore to calculate quantity conversions, litres to gallons, kg to pounds. Even figuring out the date was mind-bending since we had left LAX at 11 pm (soon to be next day) and crossed the International Date Line as well so it was now early morning, two days later when compared with our launch date.

The ICAO FLIGHT PLAN drill happened as we prepared our Dispatch and ATC departure plans. Even though our company would supply a proprietary flight plan, we needed to file manually in the ICAO format (an unusual item for flight crew in that era). The result was an ugly form with several line-throughs. I kept a copy of the flight plan and also the ground service invoice. The monetary amount was registered in PACIFIC FRANCS, & looked like PF 547,811. It seems like a staggering amount, but UAL was good for the money (actually about $5000 USD). I was relieved I didn’t have to pony up my VISA card… but we did kid around with some of the passengers about the bill.

The rest of story is non-noteworthy… we bid adieu to Noumea & New Caledonia under overcast skies, no tropical blue water in sight. Eventually our delayed Sydney arrival was further delayed by inflight holding near the highly anticipated destination. The weather had just cleared up at YSSY and they were working off a traffic backlog. We arrived SYD with 325 SOBs (souls on board), all of whom got bragging rights about landing on a Pacific Island as a bonus to the LAX-SYD trip.