What methods do people use to cope with winds aloft?
I use the GFS winds as depicted in the Ogimet gramet:
Last week on my way to Berlin I was flying at FL100 and was facing 45kts headwind. The wind was much stronger than forecast-ed.
I was looking down at the Autobahn below and it appeared the cars where driving faster than I was flying :’(
I descended as low as possible (3500ft, MRVA) but that made it even worse.
The headwind was less (still 35kts headwind), but my TAS dropped from 150 to 133 so the net effect on the GS was negative.
There must be an altitude at which you’ll get the best GS. The autorouter website has an option to take GFS winds into account. But what if the actual wind is different from the forecast?
Would it be an idea to note the wind at different levels while in the climb? Is there a rule of thumb to get the best cruising altitude based on that (actual data)? How do airliners do it?
You have no “chance” of a excat forcast, only try an error in flight! But the forcast was not so bad this day. I flew the same route and climbed from FL110 to FL130 to avoid icing over Belgium and the HW goes up from 35 Knots to 42 Knots. 30 Minutes later I decent back to FL110 and the HW dropped to 32 Knots. That was the best to archive at this day. To fly so deep (3.500Ft) make the ride to pumpy for me and to leave german Charlie Airspace on a sunny easter Saturday (even on a IFR flight) was not a option for me ;-) The higher it goes to more HW shoes up and so more bumby it gets! It was not fair such a East wind!
In my humble experience, it does not normally make sense to fly extra-low to escape bad headwinds. As you said, the loss in true airspeed/fuel economy is often about the same as the decrease in wind speed. Plus, one normally ends up flying through turbulence, traffic, IMC, etc.
Overall, remaining high up often adds a few minutes to the ETE, but the flight still turns out much more pleasant.
I have found winds aloft forecasts to be quite reliable.
One more thing: when in a strong headwind, it does no good to throttle back (one might intuitively do that in order to “save fuel”), since that will increase the percentual “impact” of the wind on one’s groundspeed.
If you have an instant NMPG indication from your avionics, you can nicely play with different power settings and see what it does to your NMPG (and thus your remaining at destination).
In a strong tailwind, fly as slow as practical (to enjoy the push from behind for as long as possible). In a strong headwind, throttle up, in order to “get outta there as quickly as possible”.
