Flight Planning and Aircraft Range

[akmatov 4]

  Just getting into all this, but I'm noticing something odd with flight planning.  It seems with the FSX and Plan-G flight planners I can create flight plans that take no notice of the range of my aircraft, ie a plan for the east coast to the west coast in one hop in a Cessna 172.  Am I doing something wrong or do I need to do my flight plan as a series of in-range hops I've figured out on the side with pen and paper?  Not a problem, but with all the built in assistance I'd think there was something there to help out that I'm missing.

[racklefratz 4]

  Just getting into all this, but I'm noticing something odd with flight planning.  It seems with the FSX and Plan-G flight planners I can create flight plans that take no notice of the range of my aircraft, ie a plan for the east coast to the west coast in one hop in a Cessna 172.  Am I doing something wrong or do I need to do my flight plan as a series of in-range hops I've figured out on the side with pen and paper?  Not a problem, but with all the built in assistance I'd think there was something there to help out that I'm missing.

 

Actually, in the real world, one can flight plan for more range than the airplane can fly too.  It's part of flight planning to avoid running out of fuel, and not all pilots do it well.  But FAA, in the USA, for example, just accepts whatever plan a pilot files - they have no way to know how much auxilliary fuel is on-board, or if any is at all.

 

You should always know what your fuel load will be on take-off, and what your fuel burn wil be at the power you plan to use.  Total fuel divided by fuel consumption per hour = hours of flight, X airspeed gives range.