Can someone explain why the ocean tracks today are going in two different directions on the same waypoints so planes are either colliding or near collison with eachother lol. like im on track y and planes are also using track y but in the opposite direction, so now its a mess. what happened to the one way routes?
Shouldn’t be a mess if it’s in two different directions. If you are going East you should be flying at an odd altitude and if you are going west an even altitude should be flown. Gives you the minimum 1000ft separation needed. Tracks work in both directions to accommodate west and eastbound traffic.
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The NATs in IF are based on real life usage of the Atlantic tracks. Irl, Center would assign you a flight level for your route
However, because we don’t have 24/7 center control, just remember to cruise on an ODD flight level (FL330, 350, etc) while flying east and an EVEN flight level (FL360, 400, etc) when flying west. You should avoid most separation issues by following this simple rule
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thank you!! i never knew this rule and the more i look at it the more i notice people are doing it and fortunately, i am at 3700 without knowing i just like that number! lol
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thanks for this! i had no idea so i was so confused how to navigate it. for having 909k xp i should know this but i always do transpacific flights
No worries! Highly suggest to take a visit to the user guide that has great insight on this
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I think NATs have different separation standards if I recall correctly, as well as different flight levels based on different direction. I recall hearing something about it but can’t find many notes about it.
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Yeah they do, sometimes you will see people flying west at odd levels and vice versa. However, for IF, the even-odd rule tends to work well to keep separation
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This happened to me today when I was flying from ATL-CDG,all 3 tracks kept overlapping no matter how many times I tried fixing it which lead to me just not using them at all.
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IF shows the next set of NAT track available at all times. IRL, NAT tracks are only available going east at night and going west during the day so this isn’t a problem.
BTW the semicircle rule doesn’t apply on the NAT tracks. Each track has assigned levels and they are often opposite of semicircular rules.
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NAT tracks don’t follow that rule, for eastbound tracks, the altitudes today are FL320-400 evens.
Here are the notams for Track X
X ALLRY 51/50 53/40 54/30 54/20 DOGAL BEXET
EAST LVLS 320 340 360 380 400
WEST LVLS NIL
EUR RTS EAST NIL
NAR N391A N381B-
While westbound track altitudes are currently FL350/370/370.
Everyone doing a crossing, should at least be checking the NOTAMs, I typically spend my entire crossing deviating right of track trying to not run into people who think that the east odd/west even rule applies.
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