This should be a one response post but I couldn't find a simple thread on Company Routes that addressed this question. Sorry if I missed in in the tutorials... I did read them and if I missed it then you can blast me.

 

How do you save a company route and when? Going through the FMC routine, after telling IRS where it is, I'll enter in the starting airport, the gates I must leave empty because I have never come across a gate that was in the library (everything I have as far as scenery is default).

 

Then onto the route, origin, destination, flight no, runway - CO ROUTE blank.

 

Then DEP/ARR to select sid if applicable. Then I type in the route. Then if I know I'll put in the arrival runway and STAR if applicable. If I don't know the arrival runway, then I'll just wait to select it when I do know.

 

With all of that... how / when do I save the core route (less the sids / stars / runways) as a company route? When you do save it, is it smart enough to truncate the SID / STAR / RUNWAY off?

 

I'd imagine that once I get an inventory of company routes built into the FMC, I would simply type in the company route in the RTE page 1 and the core route would load, is this correct?

 

Secondly, with all default scenery, is the gate entry non-functional (not compatible with default FSX)? If not, is there anything within the sim to tell me what gate I'm at? As of now if they tell me to taxi to a gate, I must use the progressive taxi to tell me where to co cause they do not have gate labels anywhere in the default scenery (that I know of)

 

How do you save a company route and when? Going through the FMC routine, after telling IRS where it is, I'll enter in the starting airport, the gates I must leave empty because I have never come across a gate that was in the library (everything I have as far as scenery is default).

 

When you're done entering the route on the RTE pages, click NEXT PAGE and it'll return you to the first route page ( 1/[X] will be displayed at the top right). This will have some sort of save prompt.

 

As for when, the answer is "whenever you want," but the logical choice (at least to me) would be when you're finished filling the route out. Contrary to how it's done in the tutorials, I usually enter the core route first, save, and then add the SID/STAR as appropriate.

 

 

I'd imagine that once I get an inventory of company routes built into the FMC, I would simply type in the company route in the RTE page 1 and the core route would load, is this correct?

 

Yes.

 

Pay attention to the COROUTE name, though. A lot of planners add a sequence number to the end, and I believe the FMC save function does as well. For me, I use the date as a sequence number when exporting from a program like PFPX (today would be KIADKDEN11, and I'd save over it next month if I needed to).

 

Secondly, with all default scenery, is the gate entry non-functional (not compatible with default FSX)? If not, is there anything within the sim to tell me what gate I'm at? As of now if they tell me to taxi to a gate, I must use the progressive taxi to tell me where to co cause they do not have gate labels anywhere in the default scenery (that I know of)

 

It's not the scenery that's the issue; it's the data. Navigraph doesn't provide gates at most of their airports. If you had the data, it would still function if you had default scenery, but it wouldn't match up with your actual position (hypothetical gate B5 on default scenery probably isn't the exact location of the actual B5).

 

I don't fly with default ATC, and if I fly into a default airport, I make an approximation of where the gate is by looking at a gate map online, and park there.