SID STAR choice

[Guest owen_is_king]

Hi. I seem to have trouble choosing the right star. I am using FS Build 2 aswell BTW if you have any suggestions for using sids and stars with that program. whenever i want to land at an airport i usually plan my star before decent and choose the most appropriate star for arrival but when atc gives me clearance to land or i am given ATIS it says i have to land at the specific runway that i am given by ATC or ATIS will say runways 9l and 9r in use for example. i then have to change my arrival procedure. i have charts for my airports but even if i have a look at star arrivals for a runway i go to select the most appriopriate star in my FMC and its not there. Can anyone give me an understanding of what star to use and tell me why i have chosen this star? any info on choosing stars will be much appreciated.

[yos233 1]

STAR101: A STAR is a set arrival route into an airport. The purpose of a STAR is to expedite traffic flow into an airport with minimal ATC interference.STARs are not always used though. You will only use a STAR if it is available for the active runway, and is on or is close to your planned route. If either of these criteria are not met, you will not be using a STAR, and it will be up to ATC to give you vectors. In the United States, you must file a STAR in your flight plan to be considered for that arrival. In Europe, as I've heard, you are assigned a STAR upon entering the terminal area. So if you are flying in the US and making last-minute STAR updates to your plan, either tell ATC or expect vectors anyway.

[Petr Bily 0]

Dear Owen,as I understan you do not have specific STAR in your FMS for specifified airport. Am I right? Do you have last NavData ?Best regards Petr

[Guest owen_is_king]

Hi.I use the default FS2004 ATC so i cannot ask them to use vectors. BTW is it possible to know what runway you will be arriving at before you get anywhere near the airport? therefore i can plan my arrival.

[downscc 1,327]

Listen to ATIS about 60 nm out, ATC will advise what runways and approaches are in use. You can also check METAR for destination enroute or the TAF during preflight for the forecast winds.Are you flight planning in the US or Europe? In the US, the STARS are usually designed to transition you from enroute to terminal depending on which of four directions you are arriving (NE NW SE SW except coastal locations). Look at the charts to see the general pattern.Also, you can see what the current routes and STARs are by checking real world flight plans on flightaware.com

[Guest owen_is_king]

Hi danI am currently flying within europe. can you explain what you mean by cheking METAR and TAF?

[harvester21 34]

He means that if you are running real-world weather you can check on websites what the current weather at your destination is. Based on that information you can make an educated guess as to which runway(s) will be in use. Click here for one example of a site that will give you the ATIS details for most airports around the world. Just fill in the ICAO code for your destination airport and there you go.You can check this at any time during your flight, but be sure to update it an hour or so before your ETA.. that way you will have the most recent data (this specific website updates the info every hour).Good luck!

[skysurfer 76]

Hi. My reply might be a bit lengthy but I’ll try to be brief. Europe airspace is a bit different from the US airspace, I would say more complicated. The same things with SIDs and STARs. When you get closer to your destination just look at the TAF and METAR. I saw you asked a question what was METAR and TAF. Briefly speaking METAR is current weather report at the airport and TAF is forecast weather. You can actually Google it. META/TAF tell you weather conditions and you can estimate RWY for landing (possible RWY). But make sure you can read them right otherwise you will find yourself in fog conditions at decision altitude with 25 kts tailwind J. To check METAR/TAF you can use this link as well: http://aviationweather.gov/adds/metars/index.php It works for all official airports around the world (make sure you are using ICAO codes, not FAA). For suitable runways based on current and forecast wind you can use www.windwiz.com, very good tool and I would say pretty accurate, it gives you RWY data and wind direction. If you have a hard time to find the right SID or STAR you need to make sure you have current AIRAC, but Jeppesen and Lido updates it very often so you will be behind in any way. I was flying to EDDF a few days ago and I saw peeps were using OSMAX arrival (STAR). It is still in PMDG database but this arrival no longer exists! Germans took it out recently and now they use different procedures and fixes on the arrival. Go figure. Also if you plan certain arrival based on wind and other conditions but ATC screws all your plans over, you have to accept it because you have no idea what is the situation in the air. Couple of advises. I jump seated few weeks ago and I saw that pilots leave discontinuities in LEGS page. On purpose! It is says that all DISCOs should be cleared but real pilots disagree. The reason why, when you arriving into a HUB like KDEN, EHAM, KDTW and so on, you will have to deal with so many RWYs and ATC uses almost all of them and they can put you on different arrival from what you have planned. When you keep your DISCOs “open”, you still have your route and IAF, but when ATC gives you different STAR you can just go ahead and swap it to another one and finally close the DISCO. But when you built your own STAR with all STAR and RWY transitions and clear all DISCOs and ATC change it over, it might be an issue. Also when you have already passed STAR transition and ATC assign you another route, don’t use the same STAR transition again, just use RWY transition otherwise FMS will bring you back to the original STAR transition and you arrival segment will be doubled and it will give you more work and confuse you even more right before landing. Good luck.

[Guest owen_is_king]

this is great information thanks for taking the time to write all of this!! thanks alot!

[Guest owen_is_king]

One final question. whenever i perform an ILS approach, i get the voice warning, "TOO LOW TERRAIN" as i come down the glideslope. i have a smooth 700-800 fps rate but this message still appears. what have i missed? was there something i had to set such as airport elevation or something?