Flightplans wanted

[warbirds 555]

Looking for user made flightplans. Shorter distance preferred. I am terrible at this and even using the flightplan sites I cannot seem to do it correctly so hoping someone had a solid, complete, working flighplan they would share.

[downscc 1,327]

Paul, why not share why you are "terrible" at flight planning rather than use the work of others?  Besides, if you are talking about the US then it's really easy, more and more flight planning is done with off-airway "directs."  Pick a departure, pick an arrival and then pick a few enroute waypoints and you're done and in the US and many other global locations other than Europe you can find the actual flight plan on Flightaware.

[BIGSKY 316]

https://www.simbrief.com/home/

 

[Bob Marton 39]

You can get flight plans on Flightaware

[rondon9898 84]

Paul the simbrief integrated route finder is very good,and if you are in europe, you can run the plan through the eurocontrol checker to verify for errors so you can add points to avoid or change flight levels. i have to say, simbrief is fantastic - whoever made it and runs it deserves a flight sim medal of some kind.

 

Also, if you’re flying in the UK, we have a standard route document in our aip - just google UK NATS SRD.

Edited August 8, 2018 by rondon9898

[DaveCT2003 1,820]

Paul,

I agree with the guys who posted above... flight planning is actually very easy even if you're building one from scratch.  You want to learn IFR flight planning and what free resources there are then send me a PM.

By the way, you didn't mention it but I'm assuming your talking IFR flight plans?

 

 

 

[Meeko 17]

As Bob Martin said ... Flightaware.  These are real world flight plans of aircraft that have just flown a particular route.  Put your departure and arrival airports in and search.  Click on a "landed" flight.  The flight plan will be on the right side of the page.  It can't be easier.

https://flightaware.com/live/

 

Bruce Ross 

[Chock 17,769]

Here's a quick one I've knocked up which should get you going on how to set one up. As noted by others, most of the live flight tracking sites can show you real flight routes and their waypoints, and so you can simply copy those and input them into your CDU. But this one is based on me intending to input the data for a very short route into the FMC on a regular Boeing 747-400 having used the default P3D flight planner. A 747 wouldn't normally do such short haul route as this unless it was the 400D variant suited to high capacity short hops, but it's your airliner, so you can fly it however you like.

It's a plan for a flight from Manchester International, UK (EGCC), to Paris Charles De Gaulle, France (LFPG), which is a straight line distance of about 370 miles, but flying along airways it would of course be a bit further than that, so let's err on the side of caution and say it is 500 miles so we can be sure we've got enough fuel. If you want to get more precise than that, you can use an aircraft config tool. The general direction of this flight track will be South-South East, which means it should - if following the Quadrantal Rule to ensure safe separation from flights coming the other way along that track - be at a flight level with an odd number plus an additional 500 feet, so we'll fly it cruising at 25,500 feet since it's too short a distance to bother climbing any higher than that.

So, I crank up P3D and select a Boeing 747-400 and place it at EGCC, choosing a Heavy Gate, in this case Gate 12, then click on the flight planner and key in EGCC Gate 12 for the start point and LFPG for the destination, then choose IFR for the flight type and High Altitude Airways for the routing. P3D then figures out a route which uses high altitude airways and we end up with this route, which since we specified using High Altitude Airways, routes us along that type of Airway. Note that you can delete or drag those waypoints about if you like, so it is entirely possible to use the built in flight planner to create a genuine real world route if you know one, and as noted, you can find those on any flight tracking website in real time or use the history features of such sites to find other routes.

It helps to think of airways as highways in the sky and the VORs, NDBs and Intersections along those as being akin to the turnoffs and signposts you'd either pass or come off at to get onto another highway. Any SIDs (Standard Instrument Departures) or STARS (Standard  Arrivals) you might use are designed to get you onto or off that highway in the sky in the most expedient fashion, so ATC know what you'll be doing. Thus ATC might assign one of these to you, or you might include one on the plan you submit to them, but since the flight planner in P3D doesn't handle these, we'll worry about that in a minute or two when we know the weather and have listened to ATIS and know which runway is in use.

Strictly speaking, the waypoints of the flight plan I've shown here are not typically how a flight plan is input into an FMC if you're using jetways, it's not unknown for it to be done this way but more often than not, one simply enters the intersections at the end or the start of the Airway one intends to route along, making inputting a flight plan less long winded and this is the format you typically see when using online flight planners, but we'll do it the way on this P3D flight plan so it's easy to follow.

So, we save that Flight Plan and hit okay, then load up the flight into P3D,and when it asks us if we want P3D to position our jet as per the flight plan, we choose yes and then we're in our 747 at Gate 12, which would in reality not be the gate a 747 is likely to be at when at EGCC; Gate 12 tends to get used for A380s, along with Gate 62, since they are both gates which are well clear of obstructions on pushback since the A380 is so large, but we don't care about that, Emirates and Etihad will have to make room for our 747 lol.

So, once in the cockpit of our Jumbo, we need to get the thing set up to go. If you want to get realistic, we need enough fuel to be legal, so that's adding things such as Trip Fuel (How much fuel you'll need to climb to 25,500 feet and fly a bit further than to our destination 370 miles away), Holding Fuel, since we're not bothering with an alternate (15 mins worth), Reserve Fuel (30 mins of fuel suitable for holding at 1500 ft in clean configuration at planned landing weight), Contingency Fuel (not less than Five percent of the Trip Fuel or not less than Three percent of the Trip Fuel to an alternate, if you have chosen one), Additional Fuel (this is for things such as if you had a dual engine failure and had to cruise at a lower altitude where fuel consumption is higher). But since we're only going to LFPG 400 miles away, let's just sling something like 8-10,000 gallons in the thing (about 15 percent fuel capacity) and not sweat it too much.

So, now all you need to do is listen to ATIS, then sling in the Departure and Arrival airports into the CDU, enter in the weights, flaps you want, winds, temps etc, etc, then go to the Navigation menu in P3D and call up the Navigation Log window. The waypoints of the plan will be listed on that. Enter them sequentially on the Legs page of the CDU, then Activate it and Execute it. Enter the departure runway and choose a suitable SID if you want to use one. Check it on the MFD by selecting PLN on the EFIS then scrolling through the Legs pages of the CDU to make sure the plan is okay with no Discontinuity gaps and of course clear those if there are any. If all is good, make sure you Activate and Execute it on the CDU and Bob's Yer Uncle. From Gate 12 it's a short taxi to the runway and off we go to Paris. When we get near Paris, ATC will assign us a Runway and we can enter a STAR on our plan and fly that, or we can just follow ATC vectors.

This is the gist of how any flight plan is done and you can get a feel for them by looking on sites such as this one which will show flights in real time:

https://www.flightradar24.com

You might be surprised to know we actually use that very website to track the airliners en route to Manchester Airport which we'll be working on (Thomas Cook, SAS, Norwegian, Baltic Air etc), since it gives us a good idea of which ones will drop on us in what sequence and then we know what stands to put equipment on, so you can't really get more realistic than that, because I can assure you that website is used by us for real operations. Sure we have some other fancy software and  equipment too, but we really do use that website since it is convenient to do so. The inbound airliners contact us on their ACARS and tell us the stand they'll be taxying to when they arrive and let us know if there are any special requirements, so we know where to put things such as steps (if there is no airbridge), belts, baggage trailers, pushback trucks etc. When they get on finals, we know they'll be on stand in about ten minutes, so then the ramp crews go to that stand and await it taxying up to that gate and the Turnaround Coordinator puts the aircraft type into the safedock system, or if it is a stand without safedock, we have a marshall on stand to guide the aircraft onto the correct spot. If you have GSX, you can simulate all that stuff, and when PMDG's Global Operations comes out, you'll basically have all that ACARS stuff which we use as well, so there won't be any aspect of the operation of a real airliner which you won't be able to simulate.

Lots of people were a bit underwhelmed by the announcement of Global Ops by PMDG, but it really is the missing piece if you're into airliner realism and you can bet that every other developer of airliners will either have to make theirs compatible with Global Ops (which Aerosoft have already done with their new Airbus), or alternatively make their own version of it if they want the ACARS equipment in the VC of their fancy payware airliner to be more than just a bit of non-functional eye candy.

 

Edited August 9, 2018 by Chock

[pracines 823]

When one dives into a complex PMDG 744, one should have a complex planner.

PFPX is likely the best planner, and after a bit of setup, it automates/simplifies the complexity greatly.

Simbrief is free and it will do the job as well.

LittleNavMap is also free will do the trick as well.

Its best to have navdata updated so todays flight plans from say flightaware will work.

This is an example of a PFPX plan for a (short 6 hour 🙂) 744 flight I did a couple days ago from EGLL to KBOS:

CPT3F CPT UL9 GAVGO UL18 DIKAS UL9 STU N546 BAKUR DCT VENER NATD UMESI N378A EBONY DCT AJJAY OOSHN5

 

 

 

[Jude Bradley 659]

Interesting article on waypoints and airways 

https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2015-06-02/a-pilot-explains-waypoints-the-hidden-geography-of-the-sky

 

[vc10man 732]

26 minutes ago, pracines said:

PFPX is likely the best planner, and after a bit of setup, it automates/simplifies the complexity greatly.

Agree it's a great flight planner..............................only wish I could find the right PMDG location to export the flight plans it creates, having lost touch with using for a rather long time.

Edited August 9, 2018 by vc10man

[Jude Bradley 659]

Simbrief has it's own downloader which you can customise to your specific locations

[pracines 823]

49 minutes ago, vc10man said:

Agree it's a great flight planner..............................only wish I could find the right PMDG location to export the flight plans it creates, having lost touch with using for a rather long time.

there is a PMDG\FLIGHTPLANS folder in your FSX/P3D directory

[vc10man 732]

41 minutes ago, pracines said:

there is a PMDG\FLIGHTPLANS folder in your FSX/P3D directory

Tried that, that it kept greying the selection saying error, or something like that.

Pity my imaging hosting website has gone belly-up, otherwise would have posted a screenshot.

 

[warbirds 555]

3 hours ago, pracines said:

When one dives into a complex PMDG 744, one should have a complex planner.

PFPX is likely the best planner, and after a bit of setup, it automates/simplifies the complexity greatly.

Simbrief is free and it will do the job as well.

LittleNavMap is also free will do the trick as well.

Its best to have navdata updated so todays flight plans from say flightaware will work.

This is an example of a PFPX plan for a (short 6 hour 🙂) 744 flight I did a couple days ago from EGLL to KBOS:

CPT3F CPT UL9 GAVGO UL18 DIKAS UL9 STU N546 BAKUR DCT VENER NATD UMESI N378A EBONY DCT AJJAY OOSHN5

 

 

 

Thanks,,I put that route into SimBrief so I could change it to the correct type for PMDG plans and when clicking the Analyze it I get an error.