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kucher
05-22-2007, 11:23 PM
On Saturday, May 19 Las Vegas to Edmonton about 45min before landing I was watching the live map. The plane went from 40,000 ft to 25,000 ft in about 7 min. What was the reason for the sudden drop. It was a little bumpy, the seat belt sign was on for about 1/3 of the flight. Just curious. Once again thanks for this site.
tb_neg
05-23-2007, 12:03 AM
That does seem a bit fast, but not unheard of. There could be any number of reasons. It may have been rougher at a higher altitude and you dropped to stay out of the worst. Higher altitudes are more fuel efficient, so maybe they wanted to stay up there as long as possible to save fuel. It may have been constraint on air traffic control, or many other reasons. Turbulence is just one of the factors in choosing an altitude.

Unfortunately, since part of the flight was in Canada, it was not completely logged at http://flightaware.com
tb_neg
05-23-2007, 12:03 AM
That does seem a bit fast, but not unheard of. There could be any number of reasons. It may have been rougher at a higher altitude and you dropped to stay out of the worst. Higher altitudes are more fuel efficient, so maybe they wanted to stay up there as long as possible to save fuel. It may have been constraint on air traffic control, or many other reasons. Turbulence is just one of the factors in choosing an altitude.

Unfortunately, since part of the flight was in Canada, it was not completely logged at http://flightaware.com
Putt4Par
06-08-2007, 10:17 AM
On Saturday, May 19 Las Vegas to Edmonton about 45min before landing I was watching the live map. The plane went from 40,000 ft to 25,000 ft in about 7 min. What was the reason for the sudden drop. It was a little bumpy, the seat belt sign was on for about 1/3 of the flight. Just curious. Once again thanks for this site.

Could be due to traffic, or to get on the glideslope (for landing), etc... many, many reasons. Most likely ATC told the pilot to descend and expedite due to traffic or to get their "ducks" aligned for landing.

P4P
tb_neg
06-09-2007, 02:47 PM
Flying into DCA can always been fun like this, but this kind of maneuvering doesn't bother me.