This is a step by step instruction guide to filling out ACARS manually for pireps since our system is down for an undetermined amount of time. In this guide we will cover the following topics: Finding a flight Finding aircraft type if unavailable from flight source Setting up acars correctly By the end of this, everyone should have a basic understanding of what is needed to file a pirep and get it approved. Section 1.0 Finding a Flight: This is the biggest task. What flight am I going to fly today. A lot of people don't know where to even start. It helps to have some city pairs in mind before proceeding. There are several different places to get the required information for ACARS. We will cover some of them in the following examples. 1.0.1 The Airline webpage: What better place to go than straight to the source. A lot of airlines have awesome search features at their website, some sadly are lacking a bit. In the following example I decide I want to fly a Delta flight from Frankfurt to New York but don't know the flight number or any other information. I start by going to Delta's Home Page
I go to the flight status page and this allows me to search the route for yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I type in FRA to JFK and hit enter. I am than presented the following page. As you can see it shows me the flight number, the departure time, the arrival time, and the aircraft used on the route. Pay close attention to the aircraft type as we don't allow deviations here at FTG. In this example it says 767-400ER and that is what I have to file, even though the 767-300ER is close it would be rejected by management as that isn't what is flown.
1.0.2 Flightstats.com (where we used to get our schedules from, main site is still free) Searching each and every airline can be tedious if you don't know what exactly you want to fly. Well, flightstats has a seach features that can help narrow stuff down. They have 2 main ones, one for searching the flight and one for searching routes. This search helps if you know the flight number and airline and just want to see what the aircraft type is.
This is the search a lot of us would be used to as it mimics what our schedules did till recently. This can give you all the airlines for a perticular route. Please note that by default the search will also give codeshare flight numbers which are not allowed here at FTG. Lets say I want to fly from London Heathrow to New York Kennedy but don't know what airline I want to fly. I can plug in LHR to JFK and get presented with the following information.
As you can see it lists a lot of stuff. If you look closely, BA117, IB4613, AA6138, AY5517, and EI8817 all leave at the same time. The actual flight is BA117 and that would be the only flightnumber that would be accepted here at FTG as we don't allow filing of codeshare flight numbers. We recommand that you select not to show codeshares. This can be accomplished by selecting no in the red box and hitting submit.
As you can see in the red box I have selected not to show the codeshares in this search as all these flights I can choose from. By clicking on one of the flights I can see everything I need to get a flight going.
As you can see I choose the 1st flight. The orange boxes highlight all the required information I would need for ACARS. The arrival time is more for reference and for the fact that if you are more than 2 hours late on arrival we here at FTG do reserve the right to reject the pirep. However, you don't have to be exactly on time. These are just some of the places you can find flight information. I do give everyone a slight warning about flightaware as their aircraft information isn't always correct. I don't know why it is but sometimes they just are in left field for the aircraft type, especially on US regional routes.
Section 2.0 Finding aircraft type when unavailable Sometimes if you are using an airline website and they don't list all the required information such as aircraft type you will have to go out and search for the aircraft type on your own. This is especially the case with airlines that just list 777 aircraft when they operate more than 1 variant, ie British Airways comes to mind. Some airlines don't list anything for the aircraft type on their webpage. Lets take a look and see what we have. As you can see on this example from aa.com under their flight status page it lists almost everything need. The only thing missing is the aircraft type used on the route. So now that we have 80% of what we need, we just need to find a way to get the other 20%. You can use any site (again give caution to flightaware) but I like flightradar24.com as it lists not only the aircraft type but the registation as well. So lets now take a look at their site. On their homepage in the top right corner you will see a search box as shown in the picture. Using this search box we can type in AA395 and we will than get the following page.
As you can see it gives us a lot of information. The aircraft type being used is the 737-800. However, if we wanted to continue we can see this flight number goes to San Juan Puerto Rico and we have departure times for it (0835 Central Standard Time). By clicking on the picture of the airplane you can watch a playback of the flight and see what altitude was flown.
Section 3.0 Setting up ACARS So now I have my flight information for whatever flight i am going to do. Since I can't prefile as the schedules are down I have to plug in my information manually. How do I do this? I start by opening ACARS and logging in. Once in I am given the following screen. That is a lot blank information. Well, since I wrote down all the information I was going to need for my flight I can simply plug it in to the correct boxes. When I am done it should look like the following picture.
The aircraft registation box doesn't much matter as long it is not left blank. I usually use whatever is on the livery I am using even if the aircraft has been sold, retired, or scrapped in real life. If the Flight number box gives an error invalid flight number format or something simliar than you need to reset ACARS system files. To do this, Open ACARS, without logging in hit the next button in the bottom middle row and you are presented with the following screen
Press the white box next to the line Reset System Files. Than login to ACARS and try the flight number again. I hope this guide will help everyone and give them an understanding of how to file pireps during this period of lack of FTG schedules. Please bear with us and know we are working on it.