London Heathrow to Paris CDG

EGLL is London Heathrow, LFPG is Paris Charles de Gaulle. These ICAO codes come from your Operational Flight Plan (OFP) — the document dispatch provides before every flight.

EGLL is London Heathrow, LFPG is Paris Charles de Gaulle. These ICAO codes come from your Operational Flight Plan (OFP) — the document dispatch provides before every flight.

Your callsign from the OFP. BAW = British Airways ICAO code, 304 = flight number. ATC uses this to identify you on radar.

This is the first place the Boeing and the Airbus genuinely part company. On the A320 you open an AIRWAYS page from the flight plan itself; on the 737 the airway columns live on RTE 2 — VIA on the left, TO on the right — and the LEGS page will not take an airway at all. Getting this wrong is the single most common "why won't it accept it" moment for a pilot arriving from the Airbus.

An airway has to contain the fix the previous line ends at, and no airway contains an airport — so L612 straight after EGLL comes back INVALID ENTRY. In the real aircraft a SID from the runway to MODMI and airway M185 bring you to MID; the trainer does not carry Heathrow's SIDs, so a DIRECT to MID stands in for that departure. Typing the TO first is how the FCOM says a DIRECT leg is normally entered (ch.11 §11.40.18).

L612 runs from Midhurst south to BOGNA on the south coast. Airways are published routes, and your Operational Flight Plan names the ones dispatch filed. An airway the FMC has never heard of comes back INVALID ENTRY — and so does one that does not contain the TO of the line before, here MID. The VIA column has one rejection for both faults (FCOM ch.11 §11.40.17), so the message tells you the entry was refused, not why.

TO is the EXIT fix, not the destination. This catches people constantly: typing LFPG here gets INVALID ENTRY, because LFPG is not a point on L612.

Not every line is an airway. In the routing ATC expects for this flow, BOGNA to HARDY is a direct leg, entered exactly like the DIRECT to MID.

M605 contains HARDY, the TO of the line before, so the FMC takes it. Typed on row 3 straight after BOGNA it would be INVALID ENTRY: BOGNA is not on M605.

In France the airway is split by level: M605 runs from FL065 to FL195 and UM605 from FL195 upwards, on the same track from XIDIL to BIBAX. At FL230 you are on UM605. It starts at XIDIL, the TO of the line before, so the FMC accepts it.

Nothing you typed on RTE 2 is in the route yet — the title reads MOD RTE 1 and the EXEC* prompt is up at 6R. Pressing EXEC is what makes it real. Every route change on this aeroplane works this way, and the lit EXEC light is the standing reminder that you have an uncommitted change.

A 737 route is not flown the moment you finish typing it. ACTIVATE stages it, and the lit EXEC key commits it. That two-step is the FMC safety net: you can review a staged change before it becomes the active route. Every Boeing tutorial you watch passes through this sequence.

Short-haul flights often use a lower cost index than long-haul because fuel savings per hour are smaller over short distances. Your airline's dispatch sets this value on the OFP — it is not a pilot decision.

For a 45-minute flight you will not spend long at cruise, and this routing sets the ceiling: the UK Standard Route Document caps the Midhurst routing to Paris at FL245, and the French airways it joins are flown at odd flight levels. FL230 is both. The OFP specifies the level.

Above the transition altitude you fly flight levels on 1013 hPa; below it you fly altitudes on the local pressure setting. It is an airfield property, not an aircraft one: 6,000 ft here because that is the London TMA figure printed on every Heathrow departure chart. Get it wrong and the FMC swaps altitudes and flight levels at the wrong height on its displays.

V1 comes from takeoff performance tables or an EFB calculation. It depends on aircraft weight, runway length, temperature, altitude, wind, and surface condition. Below V1, you can still abort the takeoff. Above V1, there is not enough runway left to stop — you MUST continue.

VR (rotation speed) is also from performance tables, based on the same factors as V1. At this speed, the pilot flying pulls back on the controls to lift the nose. Rotating too early risks a tail strike; too late wastes runway. VR is always at or above V1.

V2 guarantees a minimum climb gradient even with one engine failed. It must be at least 1.13 times the stall speed in takeoff configuration. If V2 is wrong, you might not clear obstacles on the departure path during an engine-out emergency.

Boeing flap settings are DEGREES, not Airbus CONF numbers — the 737 takes off on 1, 5, 10, 15 or 25, and flaps 5 is the everyday setting for a 737-800 off a long runway. A bigger setting buys you a shorter run at the cost of climb performance. The number comes from the performance calculation, and the FMC uses it to sanity-check the speeds you just entered.

Reading the route back on LEGS is the last thing you do before you brief it, and it is where a typo shows up as a waypoint in the wrong place. The title reads ACT RTE 1 LEGS — "ACT" for active — which tells you everything you staged has been committed. If it read MOD, something is still sitting uncommitted and the aeroplane is not flying what you see.