The local NBA team is in China right now and I’ve been reading some articles in the local sports page about their trip. It sounded like they took the team’s private jet and that got me wondering about the airport and airspace logistics of a private flight. After some googling, it looks to me like for an intra-US flight they would file a flight plan with the proper authorities. I would assume they also request takeoff and landing slots from the appropriate airports. And, as I understand it, the big jets are always being watched by some air traffic control so that they keep away from each other.
For a flight between the US and China it looks like they need to file flight plans in China as well as the US, but what about the flight path between the countries? Does anyone have an overview of where all the planes are so they are kept away from each other? I know there’s a lot of empty airspace, but I’m wondering if there’s more oversight than just the pilots keeping an eye out for other planes.
I fly private jets, sometimes internationally, although I haven’t done an ocean crossing yet.
The track system in the Atlantic is mostly used by airliners. My company always file random routes which avoid the tracks. I’ve heard the same from colleagues at other on-demand companies.
There are different procedures in various parts of the world, but the general thing to keep in mind is that there is NOT universal radar coverage. Far from it. So called “Class II navigation” is based on position reports. This is done on high-frequency radio and involves giving the times you’ve crosssed certain waypoints on the flight plan. And, these days a lot of that communication is being done through data link. There are changes coming in that system as new technology comes on line. I believe the data link is about to become mandatory.
There are a lot of rules and procedures for flying the Atlantic and in the track system in particular. There’s a good video on YouTube describing the system, but it may be rapidly going out of date.
The first time I did an overwater trip the HF radio procedures threw me a bit just because it seems so primitive. Hard to make out the voice speaking to you, and the whole thing relying on essentially computed dead reckoning. But it works.