My Greetings to all Captins,I have recently tried http://rfinder.asalink.net/free/ for a real ELY22 (EL AL Airlines) flight from KJFK to LLBG (Ben Gurion, Israel) but it returned a considerably longer route compared to the one I took from flightaware.com. I therefore, have a serious doubt on the reliability of this flight planner. I guess that it does not take into account some significant factors (in terms of flight planning) such as winds, fuel consumption, etc. Am I correct?Above all, I want to make flight plans on my own like real pilots do. I don't want to say and hope that they will be 100% correct as one of the reasons is that that AFAIK different airlines have different flight planning or route selection policies depending on the above and probably, many other factors. I have read about the advantages of FSBuild, i.e. its ability of independent (in contrast to FS Navigator) route selection, easy re-edition of the route through adding some extra data (e.g., en-route weather), etc. Will I be really able to tailor my flight plans for particular needs using FSBuild? I seriously want to start making my own flight plans. With all my consciousness I understand that it may be hard and merely impossible to satisfy this need by simply getting replies to my questions-to-come from the forum members, fellow captains. But... I wanna give it a try. I am currently not in a position to attend any AOPA or FAA flight planning courses (if any???) or something like that which probably require some $$$ also. I don't want to be a professional "flight planner" or an ATC dispatcher with all these pre-flight briefing docs and a ready-to-go flight plan to pass to the Captain some minutes before take-off. No. Instead, I would greatly appreciate if somebody could help me to start, to start learning, to guide me regardless of how sharp will be the learning curve. As an option I am also thinking to get some advise from real pilots which often stay at nearby hotels in my city after flights. What do you think, will I succeed in this way? What other options could you suggest? Web sites, guides, focusing on particular levels of flight planning like: "first, start from analysing weather situations at your departure, en-route and destination areas, then follow on with..."???Thank you for understanding!BTW, together my fellows we are planning to launch a virtual airline with base operations in Azerbaijan in a year time, probably by the end of this year. This is gonna be the first VA in my country. We're planning to put lots of valuable info for those fellow captains who'd be interested in planning fly-by and frequent stops in Azerbaijan. I don't want to promise anything in advance but just to say that we're trying hard to make our VA one of the best in the region as we want to put all we all have learned from our experience in Flight Simulation. So, once again we invite all of you to come to visit us by the end of this year. See ya' there.Regards,RustamBaku, AzerbaijanBina / Heydar Aliyev Intl., (BAK/GYD/UBBB)

Hi Rustam,The reason RouteFinder returned a much longer route for KJFK-LLBG than the real world one, is because it doesn't know the NAT system and random routes over the Atlantic, and thus takes the shortest airway route - which they'll (almost) never use in real life. You're correct saying it doesn't take into account the weather and aircraft performance characteristics. It only gives you the shortest airway route (which can really be quite helpful for flights that don't enter oceanic airspace though).>> I want to make flight plans on my own like real pilots do.That's a little misconception I've heard more often. :) In real world pilots (except general aviation) hardly ever make a flightplan themselves, but airlines have specially trained flight planners to do the job. Further, it's true most airlines have a different flight planning system and will come up with a (slightly) different flightplan for exactly the same flight, and policies also differ, e.g. are we going to fly over Irak or not? - some airlines will say yes, others say no. But generally speaking, each airline is looking for the 'lowest-cost' route, whatever that might be...Unfortunately I can't give any comments on FSNavigator or FSBuild, because I've never used them - I usually make my flightplans by hand. Two other sources you might want to check are http://www.danur.com (made for the sim-community) and http://www.uvflightplanner.com (relatively cheap real world flight planner), but I also can't comment on those.Personally, I think the best way to learn flight planning is to gain experience. Just start working on a flight plan, and try to find an answer to all the questions you have. If you come up with any specific questions then, feel free to contact me in private, and I'll try to help you. :)Cheers,http://home.planet.nl/~duijn181/cu2/koen.jpg

I use the RouteFinder to make my flight plans for Europe.The only problem is MOST of the time when you send it to CFMU for validation it finds errors.It will show me where the error is but i wish CFMU would give me the correct flight plan then.Nebojsa

Hi Nebojsa,You probably already know, but you can enter the restrictions from CFMU/IFPUV in RouteFinder as well. For example, if the IFPUV tells you the UL984 between SULUS and OKG is not available for your flight, you can enter "UL984(SULUS>OKG) " (with extra space character at the end, but without quotes) in the "Apply restrictions" textbox of RouteFinder and click Reroute to apply the restriction. This way, you'll be able to find most RAD-compliant routes...Cheers,http://home.planet.nl/~duijn181/cu2/koen.jpg

Thanks Koen,I did not know that.Nebojsa

Disregard.Nebojsa