When are you supposed to select the departure runway? The FMC asks you to do it as part of the initialization process, but in reality, I never know which runway I am given until I contact Ground. Am I supposed to initialize the FMC as much as I'm able, then contact ground, get my runway, then finish with the initialization later? How doees it work in real life too?Thanks.Chris Catalano

On real life, after you get the rwy from ground and/or clearance, you punch in the numbers and "exe" it. You can always change on the last minute if you get assigned another rwy by ground or tower. On the sim, I prepare my route, check the weather to have a general idea wich rwy we might be using, call clearance and ground and then I finalize my route by punching the last numbers. It works well just like in real life.