Monday, February 2, 2009

Las Vegas - Phoenix / Boeing 737-800 (SWA1643) / IFR

This flight was routine and smooth, mirroring the real-life flight almost perfectly, with only two minutes or so of difference for the departure and arrival times.

SWA1643 had a funny route, so I followed it. Everything went pretty well, and the weather was nice. However, I had a devil of a time trying to meet a speed constraint on the MAIER2 arrival into Sky Harbor: when I pressed the MCP button to intervene on the speed, and tried to switch from Mach to KIAS, it just refused to switch. I had to guesstimate and constantly adjust the speed as I descended. I'll have to look that up and see if there are conditions under which the MCP refuses to switch to KIAS.

Other than that, all went well.