What is the main reason most people use other flight planners? The reason i ask is because i'm debating between 2 of them fs9 or fsbuild but can't understand the importance or impact it would have on the fmc. I was able to configure both so the fmc can read them but now i don't know which plan to fly, they are both different but all that matters in the end is the arrival airport.One thing i must say that i noticed is that the fs9 flight plans seem to fly a straight line even with vor to vor type of plan. I don't use direct gps because it doesn't seem realistic but then again i may be wrong. Please let me know i'm curious!

Strictly speaking the FS9 planner is, barely, enough if "all" you want is to navigate the shortest distance between A and B. What other tools such as FSBuild adds is for instance to take into consideration one way airways, fuel calculations, SID/STARs etc. FS9 works, FSBuild is better and more "As Real As It Gets". :)The reason for the "barely" is that I

Tord et al,The FMC will accept any waypoints and airways you enter as long as they are in the databases. The FMC is not a flight planner, it's a tool for the crew to fly the aircraft more economical, with more situational awareness and for crew workload relief. :-)Cheers,

I use FS Nav and you can export the plans to both FS9 and PMDG. FsNav gives you tha ability to add any waypoints in that you want, to have the flightplan automatically made and then to change it around to exactly what you want. You can also select cruise altitude , sids, stars etc. The best feature of FS Nav is the moving map. It has everything that you would need chart wise when flying Fs9, at the push of a key.

Thanks guys for the explanation and I'll go with more realistic flt plans then. So fs9 does not have sid and stars in the flight plan? But i believe the gps has for some airports? Otherwise it just throws you on a final leg coming in from any direction.

Joe, I haven

Joe,I for one use the FSBuild flight planner. It provides so many good tools to plan a flight for the PMDG 737NG in addition to does a good job on fuel planning. It is a very powerful tool, and it exports so well to the FMC.Bob

Joe,In Europe you seldom file your terminal procedures in your flight plan. The SID and STAR are added on the fly (no pun intended) when wx conditions and thus the active runways are known. So it's a matter of how "As-real-as-it-gets"-ish you wan't it! ;-)Cheers,

>Joe,>>I for one use the FSBuild flight planner. It provides so many>good tools to plan a flight for the PMDG 737NG in addition to>does a good job on fuel planning. It is a very powerful tool,>and it exports so well to the FMC.I only have the free FSBuild version and it works well many times, but sometimes I create a short 500 nm flight, and FSBuild creates it as being a 4-6 thousand nm trip.Kerke