how to optimise choosing the technical refuelling airport?

[groundbum2]

sometimes I need to do a refuelling stop, so need to pick an airport kind of in the middle. Does anybody have a clever trick for finding the perfect airport halfway there that is nearly on the direct track between departure and destination? For example I just did Heathrow to a place in the Middle East and chose an airport in Italy as it's "on the way", but it wasn't very scientific.

Cheers,

Simon

[Amelie090904]

Example London-Heathrow to Dubai. The route is 5505km long. Now go to www.gcamp.com, cut that distance into 2 (you get 2752km) and circle the range of 2752km around LHR and DXB. It should look like this:



Now simply look for airports around the area where the two circles overlap and that's it.

[yearofthecactus]

The other option is to go to Great Circle Mapper (www.gcmap.com) as pointed out above, type in the two points, in this case the instruction would be "LHR-DXB" and the line created gives you the exact shortest flight path.

Now given most planes will have a range above half distance, the perfect stop point isn't necessarily exactly half way, but is any point on that line your routes longest segment is within the legs of your aircraft.

My tip would be Bucharest . Falls directly on the line, is open 24hrs, has a long runway and is getting on for mid-way.

[Amelie090904]

Yes, that's even better. Ankara would do well in this case.

[Cardinal]

I do both. Draw the line between LHR and DXB, and draw range circles around both.

For example, a plane with 1800nm would have several options for a tech stop. This way, if the "perfect" airport isn't available (curfew or not allowed) you can easily choose an alternate. Or, if curfews are particularly sticky, different airports for different directions of travel.

[groundbum2]

great - thanks!

How are you getting the map website site to show you the intermediate airport names, I'm OK at geography but am having to guess what the countries are from the shapes of their borders! Is there a button I can push to zoom in maybe and see what airports are en-route?

Simon

[qunow]

great - thanks!

How are you getting the map website site to show you the intermediate airport names, I'm OK at geography but am having to guess what the countries are from the shapes of their borders! Is there a button I can push to zoom in maybe and see what airports are en-route?

Simon

1. In gcmap you can enter an location in langtitude and longitude and then get all the airports around it
2. In game, you could go to routes>airport information>View airport map and see what airports are there in the game