This is a picture of Cathay Pacific’s dispatch room in Hong Kong. This is where the pilots meet prior to a flight. This is a really nice setup, and most of Cathay’s ports don’t have this, but at headquarters, we get a nice facility.

At an hour and ten minutes prior to departure time, the pilots for the flight meet up at the table that has their flight number and flight paperwork. We shake hands and greet one another if we’ve never met in the past and get to know each other a little bit. There is a sign in sheet that we initial, and then we all have a look over the paperwork.

One thing that is a lot nicer than my last job, is all the prep work that the dispatchers do for us as far as paperwork. There is a sign with the flight number on it, so we know where our paperwork is. The dispatcher has laid out all the paperwork: the fuel slip, flight plan, dispatch message, notams, weather, and other various bits of information. All we have to do is show up and look at it all, and that makes it pretty nice. Also, all this information is posted on the internet a few hours prior to a flight, so we can save time in dispatch by making some decisions before we even show up at work.

After signing in, we each have a look at all the paperwork involved in flying from A to B. The dispatch message shows us our expected weight for takeoff and the maximum allowable weight for takeoff, tailored specifically for the aircraft we will be flying that day. A lot of the planes don’t weigh the exact same amount, and it would be crazy to try and memorize the weights of each plane, so it is written down for us.

The Notams, or notices to airmen, are notes about defects at airports that are on our specific route of flight. For example, the approach guidance may be inoperative at the last airport we fly over prior to going oceanic. That would be nice to know, because if we need to turn back or have trouble, we will know that if the weather is bad, we won’t be able to use that particular airport. The weather report shows us general weather and winds along the route, and then also at all the airports along the way. This is valuable information because if we have to divert with trouble, we need to know which airports we can expect to be able to use or overfly due to poor weather.

The flight plan is looked at, and it gives us tomes of information about what our flight will entail. How high will we be flying, where our step climbs will be, what the route is, and what our fuel load should be. Step climbs are important because on a long flight as we burn more fuel, the aircraft gets lighter. As it gets lighter, it can fly at a higher, more optimal altitude for fuel burn. A heavy plane can’t climb all the way to it’s top cruise altitude because it is too heavy. After five hours or so, it will have burned off tons of fuel, be lighter, and thus be able to climb to a higher altitude. Higher altitudes save fuel, so we want to climb when we can. On a 16 hour flight from JFK to Hong Kong, the Boeing 777-300ER might start at 29,000 feet, but 15 hours later, just prior to the descent into Hong Kong, it might be at 39,000 feet, climbing a few thousand feet, every few hours.

Finally, we all agree on a fuel load, based on things like weather, how heavy our cargo is, and so forth. Filling out the fuel slip is the last thing we do, and then we gather all that paperwork up and head out to the bus that takes us to the aircraft. At other ports, we just look at the paperwork online and then again in the cockpit, but in Hong Kong, the setup is really nice. Also nice in Hong Kong is that Cathay’s crew hotel is connected to dispatch, so we just walk out of the lobby, and we’re at work!