SuseJ772 From United States of America, joined Aug 2005, 624 posts, RR: 1 Posted (6 years 1 month 4 weeks 1 day 13 hours ago) and read 2239 times:
I was looking at the top photos of this past day and I noticed in the photo below this Air China flight was cruising at 354. Of course, I thought it was just climbing to its flight level (maybe 360), but as I looked closer I noticed that AP was set at 35400 and the "rate of climb meter" (what the heck is that called again) was at 0 ft/min. So here's my question, how common is a Flight Level of XX400? I thought they were always XX000 or if VFR it was XX500? Am I wrong or is this an anomaly.
ACDC8 From Canada, joined Mar 2005, 7598 posts, RR: 40 Reply 2, posted (6 years 1 month 4 weeks 1 day 13 hours ago) and read 2185 times:
Could be that the aircraft is flying over Russia. They use the metric system for altitude so if ATC were to give an altitude clearance of 10 800 meters, that would be about 35 400 feet.
Onetogo From United States of America, joined Feb 2006, 286 posts, RR: 0 Reply 3, posted (6 years 1 month 4 weeks 1 day 12 hours ago) and read 2142 times:
Quoting MDorBust (Reply 1): Quoting SuseJ772 (Thread starter):
(what the heck is that called again)
SFO777200LR From , joined Dec 1969, posts, RR: Reply 6, posted (6 years 1 month 4 weeks 1 day 12 hours ago) and read 2107 times:
Quoting ACDC8 (Reply 2): Could be that the aircraft is flying over Russia. They use the metric system for altitude so if ATC were to give an altitude clearance of 10 800 meters, that would be about 35 400 feet.
I don't think the a/c is over Russia because it is an Air China 757 (or does Air China fly 757s to a destination in Russia?).
At any rate, why would ATC clear them to 10,800 meters instead of 10,000 or 11,000 meters?
I looked at this picture and wondered the same thing.
In China, Mongolia and Russia (hence CIS states) use metric flight levels.
FL354 is FL10800 m in the metric terms, flying from Hong Kong to Europe we go over to metric levels before entering Chinese airspace, change of flight level going into Mongolia and stay metric until we hit Europe, no real issue with them, just a bit more to say on the radio, i.e. instead of saying "flight level three five four" we would have to say "flight level ten thousand eight hundred meters"
[Edited 2007-03-22 04:59:17]
We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking – Santosh Kalwar
Quoting ACDC8 (Reply 8):
Also, are some aircraft not equipped to switch the reading on the display between meters and feet?
Yes, and some aircraft are not set up in feet. Remember a few years back a Russian TU154 almost crashed with a 744 as the TU154 transponder encoder was in meters and the 744 in feet, instead of being 20,000 ft apart as the 744 TCAS thought, they were on the same flight level.
In the aircraft in the photo it is all in ft, on the Airbus we have a metric button that displays the metric and imperial altitude, and target altitudes on the PFD, the FCU is still in ft, much the same as the glare shield on the photo in the thread starter.
We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking – Santosh Kalwar
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