Originally Posted by Nosmo King

Maybe its on airways when you use FPS2. Under Worldflight we would quite often fly random routes to avoid turbulence or avoid altitude congestion or get better winds. NRT-SFO was quite often done on random tracks well south of NOPAC tracks for that reason.

HNL-Japan flights are done on flex routes, not published airways. There are/were actually two carriers doing a test program allowing them to change their flex route after each waypoint to take better advantage of updated wind data.

The plotting chart is a holdover from non-glass widebodies AND iirc some agreements with the FAA after some long forgotten GNE's. I could be mistaken about the GNE agreements. In any case its still useful if you get a reroute and its useful for plotting TPs for those that don't know how to build it in the box.

The only thing I agree with is that fNWA guys don't have a lot of experience in the 7ER. Most of them have 757 experience going on airways Class II to/from Hawaii. Having said that I am an ex 747/DC10 and current worthless 330 guy. In Asia I have many years doing JFK-Japan, MSP-Japan, ORD-Japan, SEA-Japan, PDX-Japan, SLC-Japan, SFO-Japan, LAX-Japan, ANC-Japan,HNL-Japan, HNL-Korea, HNL-SYD, HNL-GUM, Japan-GUM/SPN in both ETOPS and non-ETOPS aircraft and CPDLC and non-CPDLC/ADS aircraft. I guess I would have nothing new to offer to a 7ER crew flying over the Pacific.