Hi there folks...A long time ago,(on this galaxy ;p) I used to fly the old but efficient ATP from SubLogic. Every flight simmer knows about ATP and it had a big feature that was cool at the time...a random flight assigner. You would only fire it up and it would choose the flight for you and it was amazing NOT knowing where to go and having the simulator choose your flight. Thing that doesn't happen in FS5 FSW95, FS98, FS2000, FS2002 and finally FS2004. Searching the net I have found a program called Flight Assigner by Ashley Shear if am correct. It had two versions, a Pro-Flight 98 and a FS2000's.Since I never owned Pro-Flight I only used the FS2000 version. Its limitation is its database wich of course by now is way behind FS2004's. At least the FS2000 version has a config file to actually add more airports yourself. I would not like to spend weeks after weeks updating by "hand". What a painful job it would certainly be.After a while limited to FS2000's database era, an Australian (wich I don't recall now, sorry) designed a random flight assigner using FS2004 database but unfortunately limited to the Australian continent. In the readme file I remember that to actually expand the search beyond Australia would be a tremendous effort to do it. So it was that or nothing.It got me thinking that this guy made the whole thing using Excel....Then it ocurred to me.....Mohammad Omar has an Excel file with all FS2004 airports. It has a "Country" column and I was wondering if using Excel it would have a random line selector command of some sort. Well, after making a research I came upon a command called Randbetween(x,y)Since the file has all FS2004 airports I wanted Excel to pick only a destination from one country otherwise it would choose any runway in the whole world and I am not a big fan of flying 12 hours straight. OK, First choose Departure airport. If you want Excel to pick your Departure airport it can do it too. But usually I fly out of the same HUB it doesn't make that difference. ARRIVAL Airport is what I want 100% of the time. Let's say all airports from country X are within lines 2000 until 3000. Select an empty cell and type "Randbetween(2000,3000)" This cell when F9 is pressed will pick a random number between 2000 and 3000. Let's say it picked number 2657. I would simply scroll down to line number 2657 and see wich airport is there and that's it. Same procedure for departure if you wish to have a random departure (I find this very, very unrealistic...for simming purposes). Of course, there are limitations as well:1-No range limit and acft specified. If Excel picks a runway 1000nm away and it's a very short grassed one, I would certainly fly a jet to the nearest paved airport and then continue the flight in a Caravan or even in a Piper J3. 2)If you really want to fly a B747 this time, you have to wait until Excel picks an airport that a 747 CAN land. That would take time because every airport would have to be cheked upon either using AFCAD or by FS2004's map itself.3) If wou want to have airports of two or more countries in the procedure a "copy and paste" would have to be made. Like flying in the US but also having Canadian runways in the process I would have to copy both US airports and Canadian airports one right below the other in the file. Or even make a randbetween command using US or CA ARR 50% probability...4)No fuel calculations. If it's a non-stop flight like coast-to-coast fuel stops will be up to you to decide where to refuel...hey, at least from A to B you're already set. I don't know, there's a lot of things that we could make Excel do but I really do not have the required programming skills. A range or duration of flight would be welcome in the process so would be type of ACFT and so on...I wonder if Excel does accept Geographical coordinates format and can calculate distance between them....Pilot_76

I've been sl-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y working on something like this. But I'm not a programmer. It really is probably archaic and not very efficient. At the moment, I have the entire US database (by hand I might add...) populated into an EXCEL spreadsheet and some limited lookup tables. There is a way to enter the great circle formulae but, like I said I'm not a programmer and this has been slowly coming along. I started back in CY99.I've been using a random flight assigner I found here in the AVSIM library, fa.zip and fa-upd.zip, both by T.A. Sear. It's got a bug though I think. I've used it extensively and I don't think it's truly random. It seems to take the desired flying distance, go out that far on a heading of 360 and then scan clockwise for an airport matching the specified criteria. The first one it finds, tag...that airport becomes it. As a result, if you originate in south FL, in the preponderance of times you run it, the first place it finds is somewhere in the Caribbean Islands. If you originate somewhere in the midwest USA, 99 times out of a 100 (and no, that's not a statically pure number...) your route of flight will be eastbound. However, if you originate your flight in CA, your selection will abound!!!! That's when I started developing my own using EXCEL, a random number generator. Problem is that I haven't worked on a range. Right now, I select the State (as in one of the 50 USA states) that I want to fly to, then have EXCEL generate a random number that is tied to one of the USA airports in that state. Voila! Instant Destination. A quick visit to AirNav to make sure the airport is a match for the aircraft and I'm off to places anew... At this point, I've also loaded all the aircraft from my hangar and added a random number generator there too. So, not only do I get a random destination. I also get a random aircraft. Of course, you might want to consider doing some kind of category/distance matching. One particular time, it had me flying from KEYW (Key West, FL to Talkeetna, AK...in a J-3 Cub...). At the time, I had just seen the movie Snow Dogs...I thought this would be neat as that movie was set in Talkeetna. Then sanity set in and I decided that would be year long trek in a Cub. But you get the idea.Not exactly what your looking for but it is possible...BobL

Hey Bobl, I just have no idea, how many RWYs are there by hand that you typed in??A friend of mine deals with Excel stuff because he's an Excelmaniac since high school and he's working on a formula that instead of generating a random number Excel will actually select a random cell within the range I specify (like US airports only, US + CA airports etc). So instead of going to the line myself the procedure would be automatic and the cell would just appear on my screen. Not sure if RWY conditions, length, ATC facilities will be a factor...Pilot_76BTW, that FA.zip is the FLight Assigner I was writing about to.. It's not Shear it's Sear the author's name.Too bad about its calculation logarythm.... :-(

American Airlines Virtual (www.aavirtual.com) offers their pilots a flight assignment program. It will actually go and create a six leg random bid. All you do is input your starting point (hub) and your rank (thus indicating acceptable aircraft and route lengths), and it creates the bid for you. It doesn't use the FS9 database, but rather pulls from the real world AA timetable, so it may or may not meet your needs. Might still be worth checking out.

I would like to have that excel airport database you referred to. I wish carry out searches of airport based on altitude and runway length in order to find challenging airports all over the world.Can you say how I could obtain ?Thanks in advance.Jose

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Slightly off topic. Help with Excel.After generating a few Random numbers on a spreadsheet, how do you retain them..... and then go on? I would like the generated numbers to be saved and then continue on.Appreciate any help. If topic is off, you can contact me privately.Thanks.Abe

Have you tried Jon Mastersons Flight Creator? (version_06_released.zip and fc06ac.zip).It has 23000 airports listed, as it was made for fs 2002 I think, but it works outside of FS. You select an airport you want to start from and it loads all the airports within a radius that you have set. Then when you click on create flight it makes a random flight from those set parameters assigning weight (passengers, luggage, etc.) It also has a few parameters like which kind of airports to include.It also will pick a random aircraft from a database that can be edited by the user. It will generate a three or two point flight, or a one way flight, all by random, or you can specify.The aircraft file can be changed by the user (enter the aircrafts you currently have to be selected randomly) as well as I have added a few airports that the database did not have.I've been using it for quite awhile now, and except for a crash every now and then, it works quite fine. I never have to go out of FS as the program is quite small. I just shrink the FS window, generate a flight in Flight Creator, enter the random flight into the FS Flight Planner (manually), and away I go!Don't know if this helps you, but it does have a database of 23000 airports. I wonder if Jon Masterson knows of a way to update it to the FS2004 airport database?

I think I might have here just what you want. I have used such Excel files for years, I have several of them really, all made by me. About five years ago when I flew for virtual Singapore Airlines, I made one such Excel file especially to SA.For example, one of those Excel files functions like this: User can choose the departure world area from USA, Canada, Alaska, Caribbean, South-America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe + Russia, Africa, Middle East, Far East, Australia + Pacific. Then he chooses arrival area. Area choosing is made by writing a 3-letter area code in certain cells. After that, the sheet just picks up one airport from both areas, and sends them to printable sheet area for printing.Of course, if departure and arrival areas are same, one can expect shorter flight.Airport database contains 870 airports worldwide, all having at least one long runway.