PFPX flight plan questions: how to determine cruise altitude and fuel

[captain420 3,099]

I will be using PMDG 777 to do a flight and I'm using PFPX to plan it all out. I have 3 questions:

 

1) How do I know what cruise altitude to use for my flight? How does one figure out this number, based on what?

 

2) The fuel, pax, cargo weight... after you finish your flight planning in PFXP and look at your flight plan... where do you go to find out exactly how much fuel you need to load into your plane? Is it the release fuel? 

 

3) Do I need to match up my Payload entries from PFPX and enter in the exact same numbers into the FMS?

[ErichB 3,651]

PFPX will calculate an appropriate flight level based on the aircraft, weights and route you have chosen. When you set up the flight in the FMC, the FMC will always tell you the recommended flightlevel for your weight. PFPX usually agrees or is close to it.

 

The release fuel is what you would enter into the FUEL section of the FMC as well as the ZFW in the payload section.(Both are in FS Actions). The release fuel figure takes into account reserves, flight, taxi and alternate fuel requirements.  Once you input those two figures, the FMC is able to calculate the rest of the flight parameters which are weight dependent. I enter the Fuel number as displayed on my PFPX flightplan. The rest is entered in metric ton decimals (unless your PMDG config is set up for lbs) - so if the ZFW is 51 200 kg, just enter 51.2 into the LSK, the same for reserves, the same for GW