A route is that part of a flight plan that states "the way" to get to your destination. The basic route consist of waypoints along an imaginary path. These waypoints could be navigational beacons such as VORs or NDBs, or simply published fixes. We'll discuss navigational beacons and fixes in another posting. This imaginary path in the sky more than likely will run along a published airway. There two kinds of those: Jet airways or simply jetways, and victor airways (no, there are not called vicways
)We usually follow jetways when flying above 18000 feet, and victor airways when flying below 18000 feet. You can see jetways identified by the letter 'J' followed by a number, such as J75. Victor airways are similarly identified with the letter 'V' followed by a number, like V123.
A route may also have a series of waypoints and instructions to transition the flight to and from the airport to the airway system. Those that serve to transition from the airport to an airway are called departure proceduress or DP (these used to be called Standard Instrument Departurer or SID). The ones at the other end of the route, between the an airway and the airport are known as standard arrivals or STAR.
What about route formats? The most popular one is the Jeppensen format. But there's also the ICAO format, and the US Domestic Airline format. Let's put this all together into several examples. A possible route from Tampa International (KTPA) to Chicago Ohare (KORD) could be:
Jeppensen:
TPA3.CTY J91 ATL J89 KURTZ VHP OKK.OKK1
Format used in Jeppesen’s FliteStar and other flight planning tools produced by Jeppesen. Flight Plan routes and waypoints are separated by spaces DP and STAR transitions are separated by periods ‘.’.
ICAO:
TPA3 CTY J91 ATL J89 KURTZ VHP OKK OKK1
All flight plan routes and waypoints separated by spaces (departure and destination airport ID’s not normally included.
US Domestic:
KTPA TPA3.CT. J91.AT. J89.KURTZ..VHP..KK.OKK1 KORD
US Domestic format, direct routings are separated by double periods ‘..’ route or airway connections and separated by a single period ‘.’ Note that the 4 character ICAO airport identifiers at both ends.
Just to keep things simple,
the Federal Aviation Administration keeps their preferred routes database in the following format:TPA, TPA3.CT J91 AT J89 KURTZ VHP KK.OKK1, ORD
The 3 character IATA airport identifier is outside the commas with the flight plan within the 2 commas.
So far, SunAir Express has used a propietary format. The route above would look like:
TPA Tampa Dept. CT J91 AT J89 KURTZ VHP KK Kokomo Arr. ORD. Like on the US Domestic, it mentions departure and arrival airports, but using IATA format instead of ICAO. Have a headache already?
Note the names for the DP and STAR are spelled out without a version number. This was done intentionally to avoid route maintenance for every procedure version change. This is similar with a standard notation that would add "DP" or "SID" or "STAR" before or after departure and/or arrival procedure name. Like:
TPA3 DP CT J91 AT J89 KURTZ VHP KK OKK STAR
There you go. Plenty of information to fill a Thanksgiving Day plate. So what do you think? Should we keep the propietary route format we have, or should we migrate towards a real-world standard?
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