Question about Departure Time

[Nareg Haladjian]

Hi. I recently joined this Virtual Airline. I was wondering if the departure time stated the time where the boarding has just begun, the time where the pushback should begin, or the time that the pilot should be leaving the ground. Thanks .

 

[Mike Sharpe]

Hi. I recently joined this Virtual Airline. I was wondering if the departure time stated the time where the boarding has just begun, the time where the pushback should begin, or the time that the pilot should be leaving the ground. Thanks .

Hi Nareg,

Welcome to Air-Child,
As far as im aware the departure time set on schedules is only an indicator. You are not required to leave at the exact time on the dispatch. But if your like me and love the increased realism I usually use the departure time on the flight dispatch as my "block off time". The time where I will pushback from the gate/apron. It's really upto you to choose.

Mike.

 

[Barthe Hogenboom]

Hi, I'm not an expert but the Pilot Manual gives some direction about this:

From the Pilot Manual, 6.0 Scheduled Flight Briefing

Departure time is the scheduled time. Feel free to change it.
Arrival time will be adjusted automatically after you click on
the ‘update briefing’ or ‘submit to flight plan’ button. Note
that this is only for the purpose of realism. You’ll have to set
your departure time in Flight Simulator anyway. Once you
submit your flight report it will show the actual times used in
the simulator, not the ones shown here.

From the Pilot Manual, 6.2 Company Flight Plan

To the right are your scheduled times. De-parture is planned at 06:15 Z and arrival should be at 08:43 Z. These are UTC (or Zulu) times, so keep that in mind when
you enter a local time in Flight Simulator. Next to that you
can (once you’ve printed out the plan) note down the times
you actually depart and arrive. ATD is when you leave the
stand, ABN when you are airborne, T/D the touchdown, and
ATA the arrival at the stand

On the net I mainly see the expected departure time(EDT) which is the time the pilots expect to be able to start engines. Passengers see this on displays in the hall. They have to be there 40-60 minutes beforehand.

So, I would use the EDT in the flight briefing and fill out the exact times(ATD, ABN and ATA) in the company flight-plan. The Flight Report records take-off and touchdown.

To my knowledge nobody got fired here for not getting this exactly right. :wink:

 

[Nareg Haladjian]

Thanks for clearing it up .