What is the BEST flight planning software?

[Ray Proudfoot 8,930]

1 hour ago, Ted Striker said:

Does PFPX read all the winds at all the flight levels along your input route of flight and then select the most efficient or quickest flight level? 

It does Ted but only if you continue to subscribe to the annual weather service. You get the first year included in the price. But you can point it to AS16 if it's on the same computer thereby saving you a few quid.

More here http://www.flightsimsoft.com/pricing/

I use PFPX for my Concorde flights as they are all custom routes to avoid flying supersonic over populated areas. No need for the wx service as I use a separate program to compute fuel data etc and that taps into AS16.

[nicboyGS 34]

9 minutes ago, J van E said:

Well, the problem is that default ATC is no good for any serious flying. It doesn't know SIDs and STARs and simply vectors you all over the place. If you get something 'serious' like PFPX you shouldn't stick with default ATC but also get something serious like ProATC/X. (In fact, I use ProATC for my planning and use PFPX only to calculate the fuel I need...)

Default ATC is only nice for GA VFR.

I understand ProATC could be better but seems still a lot of issues, but it is very complicated compare to Default ATC. On the other hand, Default ATC is very easy to instruct one from A to B, Also no SID or STAR Approach, you can pick it up where the route ends to fly your own STAR. I tried several tiems with ProAtc, it often gets discontinued during the flight if for some reason you didn't follow it precisely.  

[Ted Striker 338]

59 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

you can point it to AS16 if it's on the same computer thereby saving you a few quid

That's good to know Ray. It just makes sense to use the weather data that you are flying through. Never opposed to saving a few quid either....

Ted

[fluffyflops 1,846]

19 hours ago, ssair1 said:

Besides Simbrief, what is the BEST flight planning software that gives out accurate FPs and TO information for PDMG aircraft etc.? I have EFASS NG and currently using Simbrief but have found many shortcomings in both products...

Kind regards, 

Simbrief is very accurate to be honest.  The only thing you can't do it put biases, Mels, dmi or fuel penalties in it which is what you do the the real world.  You dont just jput in a few inputs run the plan and email it to the crew room theres alot more to it than that.  One of our 747s has 9 Mels/dmis on it until it goes in for a B check next week for example.

Ranging from packs issues which gives you a fuel penalties to steering diameter range issues which effects taxiing to runways so every time he flies we have to make sure the Takeoff alternate, the enroute alternatives and the arrival alternative has no issues for taxiing on narrow taxiways and backtracks for example. 

When the engineers come over to our flight planning desk with a piece of paper it's never a good sign

[Rossco 23]

Another one for PFPX, I have used it for years & am still finding out things about it. It's very comprehensive, so much so you need to be quite vigilant as to the settings you select. I recently didn't check the fuel specs prior to computing the flight plan & I had somehow allowed zero fuel at destination & not the 1,000lbs I like to set for the XP Lear25. Consequently I had a nervous time on one of my recent flights as the fuel planner in the GTN750 installed on board had me arriving with minus fuel (non arrival in that case of course :-). Lucky for a stronger tail wind than expected & judicious use of the power settings it turned out OK.

Re ATC  Iv'e tended to stick with default to date as I find the robotic voices of the other commercial offerings too unrealistic for me. Sure there are no SID's & STAR's however at most airports you have the option of requesting a different approach & quite often VNAV's are available, & if this happens far enough out then you can fly part of the arrival to VNAV approach point as well. If not I just request a VOR approach & ATC leaves me alone till tower frequency change. Altitude on descent into mountainous areas of course needs to be closely monitored as this is one area that really is a problem with the default. Assume the commercial programs have overcome this issue.

[vadriver 247]

9 hours ago, ssair1 said:

 Does anyone know where I can find the configuration file for the PDMG 737NG?

http://airlinerperformance.net/

 

[SimNoob 2]

On 08/12/2017 at 8:05 AM, J van E said:

In what way exactly? I use ProATC/X to plan my flights (with one click of a button) and then copy it into PFPX mainly to give me a random pax+cargo load and to calculate the fuel needed. So I don't really use it to come up with the flights. If I do however it often gives me similar results as the ProATC planner. I always have the idea none of the planners give you flightplans that are the exact same as used in real life. There always seem to be random differences.

How do you copy the plan from PROATCX to PFPX?

[cyyzrwy24 118]

Not using ProAtc though, never a big fan descending 250 nm from the APT, but I haven't seen anyone mentioning SimBrief....Free, accurate, for all airplanes...... Easy to download, WX available as well....

[Skywolf 992]

I am using Simbrief for now, still learning it daily.  So far so good.

One of these days I want to try PFPX but I do see their Topcat hasn't been updated in a while (dunno what is going on with that)

[Lenny777 299]

I use Aivlasoft in combination with SimBrief. Create the plan in SimBrief -----> Export------> to Aivlasoft, to ASP3D4 to a particular plane such as ASLabs A320 to Skyvector. Usually the latter I copy into Charts Cloud and there I have the plan and charts available.

Aivlasoft is synch'd with the AIRAC cycle updates (as is SimBrief) I have a subscription for with NaviGraph. When I get clearance and a runway from ATC then I update the SID with Aivlasoft.

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, SimNoob said:

How do you copy the plan from PROATCX to PFPX?

Well, I actually stopped doing that and now copy the plans from PFPX to ProATC. Turns out the PFPX plans were closer to real life plans.

But anyway, when I did it the other way around I did it like this:
- Start PFPX and go from the Schedule to the Flight tab
- Enter the From and To
- Select the Aircraft
- Then press the button at the top of the screen that should show Random Payload at this time
- After that the button should show Find Destination Alternates: press it
- After that the button should show Fint Route: press it
- The button will show Compute flight: do NOT press it
- Paste the ProATC plan into the PFPD Route window below: the text of the plan should become purple and the button at the top of the window, which showed Compute flight before the copying, should show Build route. Click on it and PFPX will simply use the ProATC route and show Compute flight again.
- Press Compute Flight

On the next window (Results) I would go to the OFP tab, making sure that PFPX is selected at the top of the window and not EDS, and I'd make a picture of that screen for use during the setup of the flight. After that I usually close PFPX without saving the flight. All I am interested in is the random load (pax and cargo) and the fuel (release and trip).

As it is now I follow the same procedure but as I said I now copy the PFPX flight into ProATC (and there I do save the flight for future use). I use PFPX for every flight nonetheless because of the random load, which I like, and the (obviously) changing fuel load. Creating the flight in PFPX just for this only takes a minute or so (also because I don't have to copy the flightplan anymore after the first time).

[sbague1 10]

3 hours ago, cyyzrwy24 said:

Not using ProAtc though, never a big fan descending 250 nm from the APT, but I haven't seen anyone mentioning SimBrief....Free, accurate, for all airplanes...... Easy to download, WX available as well....

I use Pro Atc X and I can confirm that descending 250 NM from airport doesn't happen. Not sure if it was like that in the past and has now been fixed but I've been using it for about a year now and have never experienced that. And for the record my opinion is that it's pretty awesome.

[SimNoob 2]

3 hours ago, J van E said:

Well, I actually stopped doing that and now copy the plans from PFPX to ProATC. Turns out the PFPX plans were closer to real life plans.

But anyway, when I did it the other way around I did it like this:
- Start PFPX and go from the Schedule to the Flight tab
- Enter the From and To
- Select the Aircraft
- Then press the button at the top of the screen that should show Random Payload at this time
- After that the button should show Find Destination Alternates: press it
- After that the button should show Fint Route: press it
- The button will show Compute flight: do NOT press it
- Paste the ProATC plan into the PFPD Route window below: the text of the plan should become purple and the button at the top of the window, which showed Compute flight before the copying, should show Build route. Click on it and PFPX will simply use the ProATC route and show Compute flight again.
- Press Compute Flight

On the next window (Results) I would go to the OFP tab, making sure that PFPX is selected at the top of the window and not EDS, and I'd make a picture of that screen for use during the setup of the flight. After that I usually close PFPX without saving the flight. All I am interested in is the random load (pax and cargo) and the fuel (release and trip).

As it is now I follow the same procedure but as I said I now copy the PFPX flight into ProATC (and there I do save the flight for future use). I use PFPX for every flight nonetheless because of the random load, which I like, and the (obviously) changing fuel load. Creating the flight in PFPX just for this only takes a minute or so (also because I don't have to copy the flightplan anymore after the first time).

Many thanks for the details.

I've been importing PFPX plans to Pilot2ATC. I'm new to ProATC and was trying to figure out a workflow. Your explanation really helps.