CLECA

I have an interview coming up with a 91/135 operator that does a lot of international flying to Europe and the Pacific. I am coming from a regional and know that this will be a weak area in the interview. Can anyone give me a general rundown on the execution and planning of an international flight? Also, any types of questions that might be encountered considering international ops? Thanks I appreciate the input.

FlyerJosh

International trips with corporate flight departments typically involve using a flight planning/handling service such as Universal or Jeppesen. Even with such services, the process can be time consuming and major trips can take weeks or even months of planning and coordination, particularly if flying to obscure destinations or countries where multiple permits and visas are necessary.

If you get hired at such a company, I would expect that you would attend the multi-day international operations training course at FSI or some other similar training provider. They would cover all of the various topics such as International RVSM, MNPS, Offshore Routing, Strategic Lateral Offset Procedure, Customs/Immigration, HF radio, long range navigation, aircraft/crew requirements, etc.

sloflier

If you are flying the North Atlantic pick up ICAO's On The Right Track, I believe you can order it for $7. It covers NAT pretty well and will give you some good background. Also, if you can get your hands on the Jepp high altitude chart for the North Atlantic it has a large procedures section you can review. As far as planning goes some people "self-handle" depending on the country and other use Universal or Jepp. Either way it can be difficult at best.

edznaz

Yup! Just made this transition myself, then did two big international trips. Get the NAT book, as it will cover most of the stuff. I use a service for planning and arranging handeling at the destination, and pre-coordinate fuel pricing as well. As for the day of trip, I show 3 hours early to allow me time to plot the charts, find all the airways on the "over there" maps, and have a preview of all the airport charts I will be using. The boss always gives me a hard time about having paper maps out "why the heck did we pay for those EFBs", but they appriciate getting the VIP service when we get there. Its really something you have to do yourself to fully understand the scope of all that goes on. If you know the NAT book without real experience, I'd think an interviewer would be fairly impressed.

Good luck

Z

kalymnos

FSI is developing a new recurrent international course look into it....

maza

Here are couple links for NAT , you can look at.

http://www.nat-pco.org/docs.htm

http://30west.flyblog.com/

Hope it helps.