Hey there thought I’d drop by and ask others as to whether they’ve experienced this same scenario with the a330ceo. Currently I am doing a long haul with this aircraft from Manila to Sydney, within the lasy 4 hours with the plane slowly climbing up to it’s step climb it was doing just fine. However as I was reaching my final step climb to FL390 the plane reached a stable airspeed of 240kts. But 20 to 15 minutes of cruising at this altitude the airspeed gradually decreased and I noticed that the plane’s N1 was above 101% and the plane was slowly losing it’s momentum. With no choice I decided to descend to FL370 and now it is currently fine and it picked up the momentum it lost. If anyone has experienced this lmk bellow this was by the way my 3rd time experiencing this with this airframe. Would love to here from your guy’s experience with the a330ceo
The A330 isn’t super powerful. If you were struggling at FL390 then descended to FL370 and were fine then FL390 is just too high for that weight. FL370 is might still be too high for fuel burn reasons. flightsmart has optimum altitudes for weight ranges for most planes. Just make sure to look at the actual load ranges and not just the recommended level because it sometimes lists a higher altitude assuming that you don’t want to step climb fairly early into the flight.
I have some altitudes listed here for the A330. FL390 I have marked down as only 20% load or less. If you had passengers you were probably closer to 40 ish which would be quite heavy.
Also, sometimes the aircraft have the ability to maintain speed but very little ability to gain speed. If you’re flying on the edge like this and you drop airspeed for any reason (headwind dissipating, sudden tailwind) you will often increase your AoA enough to create more drag and then you death spiral.
What I do for a330 is Step-Climbing at long-haul flights, my first cruise would be at FL320, then once a330 weight decreases from the fuel, around 30% of fuel is burned, I change my cruise from FL320 to FL340-360, and at least maintaining my speed at N89%-N93%, which helps a ton