can anyone offer any suggestions,i can not enter airways in to the fmc it just says "not in database", and they are valid airway names. I made a plan in fsbuild using airways with nav aid entry and exit points , sent it to the fmc which loaded it fine but only listed a few of the numerous airways in the flight instead just showing "direct" in the via entry section of the route pages. I tried to enter them manually but it would not recognise them. I just wondered if this was normal or if there is some particular teqnique that im missing, ive looked at the manual and it does not go in to any further detail on this.thanks for any advicekav

The trick is you can't go direct to an airway... you need to enter a fix that is on the airway (right hand side), then on the next line on left hand side you can enter the airway. Then, only fixes that are on the airway can be entered on the right hand side on the airway line.You can open the wpNavRTE.txt file (in the NavData folder) with any text editor, do a search on the airway name and see a sequential list of the fixes on that airway if you're not sure.. and there's always charts.

thanks , having looked in to the wpNavRTE.txt file i can now see that the airways i was trying to enter are simply not in there which would explain the " not in database" fmc message. I cut and pasted the pln from the vatsim flight planner so either my airac is out of date or theirs is and ive not updated mine since i purchased the 747x. I did not think that so many airways would have been added since then that did not exist before surely they dont change them around that much i assumed they were just ommisions and that the airac cycle data for simming just is not that comprehensive...i realy dont have a clue how its workskav

The airac data is fairly comprehensive, but you are right in that the airway data doesn't change very often. Hard to tell what's going on since you haven't provided the information that you are trying to use.