AvPlan In Flight

A few weeks back I made a flight which illustrates the power of using AvPlan for pre-flight planning and its use in flight. The flight was from Bankstown in NSW down to Moorabbin in Victoria, with a landing at Tumut. The route from Tumut to Moorabbin was via Albury and Eildon Weir. The weather was interesting. Multiple overlapping SIGMET’s were active (see picture on the left) but the app made interpreting where they were very easy. ML08 was a SIGMET for severe turbulence below 8000ft (strength decreasing from the west), and ME09 was for severe ice above FL150. The app made it easy to visualise that these areas would not be affecting our route.

The forecast also called for some rain and possible thunderstorms in the Melbourne area, so soon after we departed Tumut I reviewed the weather radar and lightning display to get an idea of the current weather conditions. This showed a line of thunderstorms forming just to the east of Melbourne, slowly moving towards my planned track from Albury to Moorabbin.

Before reaching Albury I used AvPlan to re-route my flight. Tapping and holding on the waypoints, I updated the routing visually on the map. Then I contacted Albury tower and gave them revised routing via Corowa, Echuca, CANTY, Melbourne to Moorabbin. The app calculated revised ETA’s for each waypoint using forecast winds, and told me my revised route added another 15 minutes, so I knew I had enough fuel for the revised route. We then proceeded to fly the revised plan, cutting the corner on the Corowa, Echuca,CANTY leg when it was clear we could remain clear of the weather.

On descent into Moorabbin we could see the line of storms to our left, but out flight proceeded without incident – we saw no turbulence and no cloud. This was all achieved without any fancy equipment onboard the aircraft. All I used was AvPlan and the Telstra 3G network.  This flight is a perfect illustration of the power that AvPlan brings you for both pre-flight planning and in-flight decision making.