Entering Oceanic Flight Plans into the PMDG B744's FMC

Oceanic flight plans contain Oceanic Waypoints ( OWPT) which are used for aircraft position reporting upon entry to and exit from oceanic control areas. An OWPT consists of latitudinal and longitudinal position information ( LAT/LONG). The OWPT handling follows a standard naming convention to reduce the number of keystrokes for entering an oceanic flight plan into the FMC, thus minimizing the possibility of data entry errors (reducing the risk of gross navigation errors).

To insert OWPTs of an oceanic flight plan into the PMDG B744 it is necessary to switch the FMC's RTE page to the LEGS page. All waypoints (including those along the respective airways between the manually entered waypoints) will be listed up here. The OWPTs need to be entered directly to the LEGS page and will be displayed on the RTE page as waypoints when switching back to it for completing the flight plan programming.

The real world B744's FMC accepts two formats for entering OWPTs: The ARINC 424 Format and the FMS LAT/LONG Format.

The PMDG B744 does only accept OWPTs in ARINC 424 Format !

This is not a limitation by the PMDG simulation itself: OWPTs are treated like any other waypoint by PMDG and need to be stored at the FMC's database to be supported. Navigraph databases only include OWPTs in ARINC 424 Format.

The ARINC 424 Format is a five-character format consisting of four numbers and one alpha character, in either NNANN or NNNNA format. The first two numbers represent the latitude in whole degrees and the last two numbers are the longitude in whole degrees. If the longitude is greater than 99° the appropriate alpha character is placed between the numbers, otherwise the alpha character is positioned right of the four numbers.

The alpha characters "N", "E", "W", and "S" indicate positions within the northern or southern hemisphere for latitude, and the western or eastern hemisphere for longitude:

"N" = north latitude / west longitude

"E" = north latitude / east longitude

"W"= south latitude / west longitude

"S" = south latitude / east longitude

The FMS Lat/Long Format is a self-explanatory seven-character format (NNANNNA) showing whole LAT/LONG degrees (see example below).

OWPT examples of both formats:

Marc Westhofen