When I fly my minute C172 at our flight club, I start up the a/c from "cold and dark" every time, takes me about 15 minutes divided between pre- taxi, pre-flight run up, clearance delivery if I have filed IFR, instrument flight pre- departure checks, and maybe a little longer if I need to call a fuel truck to the ramp. In many ways this translates to starting C&D in the NGX.But the pre-flight planning and filing a flight plan takes even longer, working with performance charts in the POH, calculating leg planning with an electronic "whizz wheel", and much more including weather research and flight briefing, as well as having to show a dispatcher at the club that I have done so, and have current METAR and TAF info, as well as NOTAMs. I'd be interested from those who know how this pre-flight planning takes place for pilots in an actual airline. I know that dispatchers are assigned to specific flights, but can someone give us a run-down of how a typical flight is planned, from a pilot's perspective?Since C172 fuel gauges are notoriously wrong, we calculate fuel burn (and - more importantly- fuel remaining) from elapsed time together with fuel burn charts for the various stages of flight. We also, if filing IFR, keep track of any variance between ETA and ATA for waypoints in the flight. I assume that similar checks are done in the big and sophisticated aircraft too, just done differently I assume? Any information regarding this in-flight flight checks would also be appreciated.I hope that this is on topic, I realize that it's hard to simulate some of these things, including cabin crew briefing etc., but any info that anyone who knows would be great, if only for perspective.Thanks, Bruce Knight.

After watching an Air Canada 777 DVD, one of the things I noticed the captain do was to note, from the FMC, the estimated fuel at destination before takeoff, and then again at points during the flight. The estimation of fuel at destination should remain the same ideally, so any trend, especially downward, would need to be looked into.

I know that dispatchers are assigned to specific flights, but can someone give us a run-down of how a typical flight is planned, from a pilot's perspective?

Well I can only speak about the operation I know, but I feel pretty much all major airline flights are completely planned by dispatchers (might be different in US, I dunno). As a pilot you usually you just log into the system before flight and print out the OFP, WX, NOTAMs and whatever is needed in every particular case. The route will often be downlinked into the FMS via ACARS, and it's also common to receive the load sheet that way and print it out right on the aircraft.Other than that the PIC need decide how much extra fuel he wants and give the total release numbers to the agents. Of course the flight crew briefs the routing and the weather along, plus any other important items that might arise.During flight you might fill out the ETO times and see how you track the OFP predictions. In fact since airports are so busy today, some require to land as close as possible to your STA (similar to a slot on departure). That means, even if you're faster than expected (e. g. due to increased tailwind, ATC short cuts and the like) otherwise airlines will have penalties sometime.I have spent a few days in the dispatch office (not as a dispatcher, just to observe) and it's certainly crazy. I don't think one could ever plan a typical airliner route by hand in reasonable time. The problem is not "finding" a route exactly - you have the charts, and if there were no other traffic you could PROBABLY fly so. As I have seen it, way more critial seem to be (temporary) restrictions in certain countries, their airspaces and on their airports. The dispatchers have extremly specialized tools that allow them to minimize these ever changing restrictions, but I doubt you could be fast enough to keep track of them if you did the whole planning manually.

Thanks Etienne, I had already assumed that the planning/dispatch function was highly automated and there were specialized staff/tools that were used, but this is interesting, thanks for the information. This is a phase of flight often negelected in simulations where the focus is more on how to set up and/or fly the airplane than all of the planning that occurs prior to the flight. I often use the Flight 1 C182T (which has performance that actually is very close to the data tables in the "POH" included in the product) and do all of the manual planning that I would prior to r/w flight, then look for any timing trends enroute and update ETA's and anticipated fuel burn accordingly- it adds to the immersive experience for me as this is what I would do in r/l, and the challenge of trying to forecast winds aloft and their effect on the flight is something I like- also akin to r/w. But the reason for me asking this in the first place was that I expected that the airliine world needed to be a whole lot more sophisticated than what I do in a single engine GA a/c, and I wondered what the routine was. Even in the GA world, one can make use of many flight planning tools (AOPA has a good one) that take some of the manual work out of planning, and onboard devices also make the enroute flight analysis a lot more integrated as well- although I like the manual method, and use the high tech tools to cross-check my manual calculations- the joys of being a math nerd, I guess... :) Thanks again, Bruce.

I had already assumed that the planning/dispatch function was highly automated and there were specialized staff/tools that were used, but this is interesting, thanks for the information. This is a phase of flight often negelected in simulations where the focus is more on how to set up and/or fly the airplane than all of the planning that occurs prior to the flight. I often use the Flight 1 C182T (which has performance that actually is very close to the data tables in the "POH" included in the product) and do all of the manual planning that I would prior to r/w flight, then look for any timing trends enroute and update ETA's and anticipated fuel burn accordingly- it adds to the immersive experience for me as this is what I would do in r/l, and the challenge of trying to forecast winds aloft and their effect on the flight is something I like- also akin to r/w.

That's true, and TBH the planning part just IS a little harder in the simulation. First of all as you say, you need add-ons that are reasoably close to the numbers. Then you need mainly external resources outside them sim, and their availability may differ greatly on where in the world you want to go. Like, you might easily find charts for any US airport, but probably none for central Africa or the like.

But the reason for me asking this in the first place was that I expected that the airliine world needed to be a whole lot more sophisticated than what I do in a single engine GA a/c, and I wondered what the routine was. Even in the GA world, one can make use of many flight planning tools (AOPA has a good one) that take some of the manual work out of planning, and onboard devices also make the enroute flight analysis a lot more integrated as well- although I like the manual method, and use the high tech tools to cross-check my manual calculations- the joys of being a math nerd, I guess... :)

Haha no, I like to the same pretty much. Although I mix manual and tech a little bit. Of couse planning a GA flight, even IFR, is possible by doing manually. In fact it would work flawlessly almost all the time. You plan a route, think about fuel, loading and performance, file a flight plan, check weather, NOTAMs, and you're basically good to go.As far as performance goes though, things might get a little exhausting sometimes. That's obviously why many people will only once calculate very conservative numbers for adverse conditions (high temperature, low air pressure, high weight etc) and use those all the time. Just say, if conditions are better (which they usually are), I'm safe. Well that's a valid approach (sorta), but I don't like it. I just like to have definite numbers. That's why I wrote a planning tool for myself. As you say, there are great tools out there, I don't doubt that. But one day I had something in mind that was tailored to my very needs, so I gave it a shot. It also does all the performance calc's. Mainly because the POH I use has graphs instead of tables, and interpolate graphs is a great deal more awkward if you want to come up with exact numbers, IMHO. So I "digitalized" all the graphs by approximating them with simple functions (I crosschecked them and they are pretty much exact down to a pixel level), and the tool would interpolate on its own and throw out some pretty useful numbers. Plus, if I'd interpolate manually, in this case planning would take forever, using my tool however I need literally seconds until I can print out my flight plan, performance and W&B data with spot-on numbers. So if you will, I also use a "specialized tool" for my GA planning . But I feel a little better this way instead of using a 3^rd party tool, because I did it myself and know exactly what it does. Many would also write Excel sheets to do that, and I always think it's better if you write that yourself because only then you have understood what it does and how so. Again, using any other tool will do just as well, as long as you set it up properly and can "trust" what it does, no question. But to get back to the airlines, just think about slots. When I fly a GA plane, alright I might get a slot if I have bad luck. If they're really really busy the one slot might even change, or they might cancel it, but that's as exciting as it would probably get.Again talking about the dispatch office, this is totally different. First of all, they seem to have a way more direct connection to ATC. For example, when doing my manual GA planning, I would either fax my flight plan to ATC or file it on a special website. Then it usually takes some time until it gets approved (it may take up to an hour but it never did take so long).The dispatchers however, can file flight plans "directly" to ATC, it's like injecting them into the system. I believe it's technically impossible for them to file invalid flight plans, that might be a reason. They can change any flight plan within seconds, and shoot it into the system. They can amend them as often as they want, and I tell ya they do it SPEEDY.When slots come into the game (which is most of the time), things get really crazy. There are phases during the day where the office is pretty much quiet (they work 24/7 obviously). Whenever something happens at any airport though, or there's anything else out of the ordinary, things might get different. They immediately start to amend many flight plans for many planes, changing departure times and such. More than often they do telephone calls in between, trying to coordinate slots for particular flights and get the best possible. It's insane to watch them do their work. Sorry for the rant.