Does the flight planning software you guys use take into account winds aloft for both route and altitude? For example, say a planned route was 1000nm, and say 1000lbs of fuel is burned per 100nm. (I know not realistic numbers here, just making the math easy). Now, will the software look for a route that could be 1100nm or 1200nm but with the right tailwinds so the route will fly like say, 900nm thus saving 1000lbs of fuel? Or does this just not happen often? Same thing for altitude. Maybe higher is more fuel efficient, but the headwinds are less so the lower altitude is planned?Bottom line question is, are these factors significantly considered by software and how often does a "shortest route" or "preferred altitude" get discarded for these factors?Thanks,Joe Miller

hello what youre asking is " the programm is clever or not ???" correct me if im wrong..i cannot talk for all programs but aurora one i know a little is based on many factors but not only wind but also temp because if you isa +20

Hi Joe,> Does the flight planning software you guys use take into account> winds aloft for both route and altitude?Yes, it does. It creates a "shortest time track" depending on the weather data (which is updated as much as possible). Both the route and the altitude are affected by that.> Are these factors significantly considered by software Yes, they sure are (but you can always choose plan without weather data).> How often does a "shortest route" or "preferred altitude" get> discarded for these factors?For long distances, aircraft operators will almost never fly the shortest route from A to B. So the shortest route will be discarded very often.The preferred altitude is also very weight dependent, so it's less often discarded than the shortest route. But e.g. when there are very strong headwinds at a higher level, the planning software will certainly plan at a lower level with less headwinds (if possible).And as Phil said, you cannot (always) plan the optimum route because of airspace/ATC restrictions and/or performance limitations (e.g. ETOPS).Kind regards,Koen

Thanks a bunch to both Phil and Koen for their quick and thorough replies...The response is basically what I expected to hear, but at the same time wasn't sure how much was left to "manual" process vs the software handling most of it.Now the million dollar question. This "software" isn't exactly available retail, is it?I have the FliteStar IFR Planning software, but the thing that bugs me the most is that it doesn't take into account weather. I shelled out hundreds of $$ for it thinking that it did and was rather dissapointed to find out otherwise. Sure, you can pull the weather forecasts in, even overlay them on the route, but when it comes to actually planning (generating) the route, weather doesn't matter...it always elects the shortest route.I've mentioned having the software as sort of a question in itself - that if it is possible to consider weather with FliteStar then I'm doing something wrong and I'd be happy for someone to point it out.Anyway, thanks for the responses and in the meantime, I'll work with what I've got.Joe Miller

hellowith flite star you can pay for a month weather access via web and get the same datas i have but another story is to get the good profiles for aircraft you want to simulate and that s why jep is making money with selling access to companies to do flightplans but not with flite star ???!!!!

hellohonestly for the price fsbuild 2.0 is far the best bargain you ll never do and got a lot of profiles i created...lolanyway if you re very rich they re some software to sell and can be fitted to your desire but million is not the question certainly millions if still available as many pay only for access less expensive than buying the programm itself...hope this clear some clouds to planning...