4 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Speaking as someone who lives close to Manchester (EGCC) the first part of the SID is definitely flown. Westerly departures from 23L/R require a right turn soon after take-off to avoid overflying the town of Knutsford. Woe betide any pilot who broke that rule!

But I'm sure the rules are relaxed later in the SID especially in regard to altitude. As far as STARs are concerned I assume they will fly them until otherwise instructed by ATC which will always be the case.

I agree on that. When I lived in Mexico City I had a wonderful view of the MMMX airport and verified that most of the aircraft (if not all) definitely flew the SIDs and STARs, or at least the latest and first portions of them, as far as I could watch. The Benito Juarez airport is located within the city, sourrounded by mountains (and volcanoes) and is relatively of high-traffic, so I suppose adhering to the rules was the top priority when it came to landing and departing from there. In fact, one of the SIDs sent all the aircraft taking-off from RWY 23L/R right above the roof of my building, and that was very easy to note.

Cheers, Ed

 

2 hours ago, J van E said:

Interesting! But I suppose there isn't an ATC addon that works with that system LOL 

I will have a look at some charts to see if I can find anything about that system. Are those MP's on the chart also...?

EDIT
Which charts are you referring to btw...? I can't find anything about PMS on the charts I use:

https://ais.avinor.no/AIP/Latest/aip/ad/engm/engm_en.html

Hi Jeroen,

I was looking in the Jeppesen (Navigraph) 10-1 (textual data) pages. If you look in the "ENGM Textpages" file you will find that text on Page 14 "Procedures for arriving IFR flights". (This incidentally is one of the downsides of the free AIP charts -- you have to wade through all the nonsense containing the precise co-ordinates of navaids etc to pick out the stuff which is actually relevant to you as a pilot!).

Thanks, Simon, I'll see if I can find anything more about it.

No worries! This video from when the system was introduced at Oslo gives an overview of the general concept:

 

17 hours ago, J van E said:

Anyway, I was wondering if it is possible to fly in a more realistic way because visiting every SID and STAR waypoint on every flight doesn't seem to be realistic

If you fly on VATSIM, and you have ATC coverage, you almost never fly the full SID/STAR - if any of it.  Also, when you're on VATSIM and you don;t have any ATC coverage, invariably you would self-vector if you have no conflicts.   - so either way, it reflects reality.

22 minutes ago, skelsey said:

No worries! This video from when the system was introduced at Oslo gives an overview of the general concept:

Thanks for the video! Interesting! However, I don't think ProATC (or any other ATC addon) supports this. 😉 

I think I will keep on using ProATC and either plan a flight without SID exit and/or STAR entry (so I will get vectored all the way) or I will ask for a Direct to whenever I think it's possible or appropriate.

You should have seen CA a month or so ago, the entire state had TFRs (from wildfires) all over which impacted flights globally.

More recently Hurricane ally.

I’m a Foreflight user, it’ll display all current TFRs, runway closures, incidents, maintenance, etc.  there always seems to be something going on at the locations I choose to fly ... I have ProATC, but I don’t think it is aware of real world events that change SID/STAR usage?

Cheers, Rob

18 minutes ago, Rob Ainscough said:

I have ProATC, but I don’t think it is aware of real world events that change SID/STAR usage

Hi Rob:

I don't think so, either, but at least since ProATC reads the current weather, it normally assigns the RWYs and the corresponding SIDs and STARs according to the prevailing winds.

Cheers, Ed

I did a few flights with the Majestic Q400 and ProATC using the 'ask for a Direct to' method to skip parts of the SID and STAR and it went perfectly fine. Shortly after take off I asked for a Direct to the SID exit point and during cruise I asked for a Direct to the intersection of the assigned STAR. I also started to use RNAV approaches which work great: I set VNAV using the FAF and let the plane fly on VNAV from cruise to (almost) landing. As soon as ProATC assigns an ILS (unfortunately you can't tell it to assign an RNAV approach by default) I requested an RNAV approach and everything went perfectly fine from there on. No radio's to set, no course to set, no source to switch... how relaxing! ;) I only had to arm and act appr on the FMS (although I think the plane would have flown all the way downto the runway on regular LNAV and VNAV also...?).

Yes, I'm having big fun with all this! :)

I usually fly the SIDs as often or not they are relatively straight forward. I find alot of STARs make no sense so in those instances i manually adjust my route to something more believable.

Having asked a pilot about this it turns out the STARs are often terminated early and radar vectors given. I assume the same applies for SIDs

3 hours ago, Matthew James de Bohun said:

Having asked a pilot about this it turns out the STARs are often terminated early and radar vectors given. I assume the same applies for SIDs

Since asking for Direct to's and skipping (huge) parts of SIDs and STARs my flights look a LOT more like the ones I see on FlighRadar24 and they are a lot more enjoyable: I always hated almost being able to touch the airport and then having to fly all the way around it in odd patterns. 😉