The status of future freeware terminal procedures

[Guest staang]

Ok, here's the story as of today. As most all of you know the DAFIF is gone. However, in its place the NGA is providing the USFIF. This is good news but the bad news is that the USFIF contains only U.S. terminal procedures. So as of the 0611 cycle, coming up the 26th of Oct, I will be providing up-to-date terminal procedures (SIDs, STARs and IAPs) for U.S. airports only. This still amounts to over 1400 airports for most aircraft.This change may cause a few problems with those aircraft that combine all the procedures into one or two files. In those cases when that file or files are replaced during update it in effect deletes all the procedures that are not U.S.. This will necessitate that those that fly in other countries will either have to add in those airports they want themselves or continue to use the 0610 worldwide cycle. Sorry about that but that is what happens when all the airports are put into one big file.For those aircraft that wisely put the terminal procedures into separate airport files you will have only the U.S. airports being updated. All other airports will remain as they were in cycle 0610 unless you update them yourself.You may also wonder about how the AIRAC navaid files that used to be supplied by navdata.at fits into this new USFIF. In most cases my procedures contain the lat/long for each waypoint so if there is a real world change it will be reflected in the procedures even if you don't update the AIRAC navaids and airport data. In some cases the FMC displays the cycle number so if you do not update the AIRAC data then it will display the cycle of the last AIRAC update you did. Again in most cases this will not be a problem when using the terminal procedures unless there were runway number changes or if your particular aircraft checks a waypoint name against an AIRAC waypoint name list instead of using the lat/long for the waypoint. You'll probably get an error on that one if the old AIRAC data didn't have the waypoint in question. You'll either have to update the AIRAC or manually add the waypoint in question yourself.Regards to allTerry