Hi allI have just recently tried my hand at flight plan compiling since David "Opa" Marshall posted a few links in a previous post, when I wanted to change the number of flights in to a certain AP. Since then the bug has sort of taken over from most other stuff. My knowledge of real world airline operations and in particular at this moment in time, flight schedules is very limited, so..... to aid me in my quest to compile a real world airline flight plan, could someone explain what "Stops" in a schedule relates to.My first thoughts were that if for example, the schedule showed "No Stops" then does this mean that this would be a layover till the following day ? or a straight return to the original departure point. :( If then the schedule showed "1 Stop" then does this mean that the flight would go to the first destination and then on to another destination before returning to the original departure point.Some one said in a tutorial I read "not to blame him for sleepless nights once you start this sort of thing", :( lol now I know what he meant.Many thanksTerry.S

You should read through John's tutorial...it should help you to understand stops and why they're needed.Markhttp://www.john-goodwin.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/page4frame.htmlWell I hope that

Just to try to make it as clear as possible, don't think of a flight plan as "flight". It's really the life story of a given aircraft for that period of time. For GA aircraft, this might be what the plane does every 24 hours (or even every 4 hours). It will then repeat that behavior indefinitely. For airliners, most better flight plans are in the WEEK format. These tell the story of what happens to that one aircraft for a week (which then repeats for the next week).A real plane doesn't fly one flight out and one back, and then sit the rest of the week. It goes on and flies to other places (or repeats the flight it just flew with a new flight number). A flight plan should do the same thing.Once you start thinking about flight plans that way, the "stops" become logical - they are the places this plane travels to during that week.Hope this helps,