Transatlantic Spacing

[Tyler_Copeland]

Sooo I’m just trying to get time logged and I’m running a flight from KJFK - EGLL on the Training server

As I notice there are 4 other people heading toward the active track for tonight(Track Zulu) and I just wanted to take a second and share and ask the community what normal spacing would look like? Right now it appears as if we are about 45NM apart…

What’s classified as the normal “Spacing” for oceanic flights?

[Drummer]

I believe it is 5nm and 2000ft spacing up at cruising altitudes.

Normally it is 3nm and 1000ft spacing

[Philippe_Gilbert]

I often see a lot less separation than that in the real world. As you can see from this picture:

As long as any planes don’t appear as yellow or red on your map then you’re good. Safe flight! 😊

[Tyler_Copeland]

Guess my follow up would be that why does IF only have 1 track? Looking at this it looks like they are using all of the northern tracks…

[Drummer]

The tracks are provided from NavBlue, which provide current data of tracks being used in real life. Since the pandemic there are less flights so there isn’t really a need for a bunch of oceanic tracks

[CaptainSooraj]

Well, there’s three ways:

1. Lateral separation (north-south separation). That spacing is distance based - supposed to be about one degree of latitude apart.
2. Longitudinal separation (east-west separation). That spacing is time based - supposed to be about 10 minutes apart.
3. Vertical separation (altitude separation). That spacing is distance based - between 6000 feet and 28,000 feet, separation is about 2000 feet between aircraft. Between 28,000 and 41,000 feet, if the aircraft qualifies for RVSM (reduced vertical separation minima), that can reduced to 1000 feet between aircraft.

Hope this answered your question!