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Virtual-Chris

Real world airline flight plans

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After enjoying lots of GA VFR flying, I’m starting to wrap my head around airline IFR flying.  I’ve been reading up on ILS, STARs, SIDs, airways, etc.  

I’ve been playing around with some flight planning... You can select your runway, approach, transition, etc. In MSFS you can go gate to gate of course... and never speak to ATC. But I suspect that’s not realistic at all.

So one question that pops to mind is... does an airline flight plan typically include the approach specifics? Or just enough to get the plane to a waypoint where ATC takes over? Is the approach determined and communicated by ATC as you near your destination based on weather, winds, etc? Or how does this work? Are pilots entering the approach or pulling it up in the FMS upon arrival, or is it all pre-programmed ahead of time as with the MSFS flight planner and you’re hoping nothing changes? How does it work in the real world?

Next question is... does MSFS support this kind of real world dynamic?

Edited by Virtual-Chris

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The real world flight plan will include the SID, STAR and runways and approach in use.

The are all subject to change and it is ATC who will actually issue you with the routing and arrivals  as you get nearer.

Its always a good idea to carry extra fuel to carry for these eventualities.

A good real world example is going into Florida in summer where convective weather can cause chaos. I’ve had it before where I’ve been planned on the CWORLD arrival Into Orlando from the North down the east coast of Florida and ended up having to reroute down the west coast over Tampa and approaching from the southwest.

In short expect the unexpected. But in the sim you are at complete liberty to what the heck you want.

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787 captain.  

Previously 24 years on 747-400.Technical advisor on PMDG 747 legacy versions QOTS 1 , FS9 and Aerowinx PS1. 

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4 minutes ago, jon b said:

The real world flight plan will include the SID, STAR and runways and approach in use.

The are all subject to change and it is ATC who will actually issue you with the routing and arrivals  as you get nearer.

Its always a good idea to carry extra fuel to carry for these eventualities.

A good real world example is going into Florida in summer where convective weather can cause chaos. I’ve had it before where I’ve been planned on the CWORLD arrival Into Orlando from the North down the east coast of Florida and ended up having to reroute down the west coast over Tampa and approaching from the southwest.

In short expect the unexpected. But in the sim you are at complete liberty to what the heck you want.

Thanks. That makes sense. Does the sim ATC ever change the approach or runways from what’s in your flight plan?

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Atc ignores flight levels in the plan to an extreme degree at the moment normally insisting you are at 39000ft with 10nm to go. A second later it will insist on you being at 2000 feet. This is by a huge amount its most annoying feature. Hopefully it will become more flight plan aware very soon.

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1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Does the sim ATC ever change the approach or runways from what’s in your flight plan?

That I don’t know as I don’t use the ATC in the sim.

I’d imagine if the sim is using real-time weather and the wind changes direction from when you flight mplanned it might potentially lead to a runway change ? Not sure.


787 captain.  

Previously 24 years on 747-400.Technical advisor on PMDG 747 legacy versions QOTS 1 , FS9 and Aerowinx PS1. 

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1 hour ago, CJ1045 said:

Atc ignores flight levels in the plan to an extreme degree at the moment normally insisting you are at 39000ft with 10nm to go. A second later it will insist on you being at 2000 feet. This is by a huge amount its most annoying feature. Hopefully it will become more flight plan aware very soon.

I've seen lots of people talking about exactly this behaviour on the forums, but I've not yet seen it myself. I've been flying almost exclusively IFR for the past couple of weeks with the in-sim ATC.

This may not be any different to how others do it, but I always specify a departure as well as a STAR (if available) and an approach runway in the MSFS flight planner. I sometimes get cleared to descend a little bit earlier or later than my planned TOD, but never by a ridiculous amount.

 

2 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Does the sim ATC ever change the approach or runways from what’s in your flight plan?

I've never been assigned a different approach than my flight plan by the ATC, but sometimes I've noticed that the ATIS and other aircraft are using a different runway to the one I'm using. So I guess they probably don't change the approach unless you request it from the ATC on arrival.

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When building the flight plan, Is there some way to determine what the active runways are for takeoff and landing for airports you’re not familiar with?

Edited by Virtual-Chris

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5 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

When building the flight plan, Is there some way to determine what the active runways are for takeoff and landing for airports you’re not familiar with?

You could check the current weather at those airports to determine the active runway. That's provided you're using live weather. That, of course, is subject to change by the time you get to your destination or even by the time you push back from the gate at your point of origin.

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50 minutes ago, mwilk said:

You could check the current weather at those airports to determine the active runway. That's provided you're using live weather. That, of course, is subject to change by the time you get to your destination or even by the time you push back from the gate at your point of origin.

For airports with two or more parallel runways the weather/wind will only tell you what direction to approach from. It won’t tell you what runway is being used for take offs and which for landing. For example, in Vancouver, the southern runway is used exclusively for take offs. The northern runway used for landings. How does one know this if you’re not familiar with the airport?

You could easily put a flight plan together that would have you landing on the wrong runway regardless of weather. How do you avoid this? How do real world flight planners know?

It must be published somewhere. 

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What you don't get in a flight sim, is all the logistical support that crews have in real life. For example, at most airports, there is either an airline base of operations, or a service agent, which you can talk to on the radio (even when you are a long way out). In fact crews do this to let their service agents know if there are any special requirements upon arrival, such aswe have two passengers who will need wheelchairs, we have an unescorted child, we have a rowdy passenger who we've ziplock tied and we need the police to meet the gate, we need a doctor for a passenger on arrival, we have a faulty APU and so we will need to do a fixed electrical power shutdown, and so on.

Also (in Europe), you have Eurocontrol, who  give you information related to your flight and can tell you what runways are in operation, what delays there are, etc. There are similar services outside of Europe. Some of this is via radio, some via ACARS and some by the more modern text-based comms systems you find in recent airliners such as the Airbus A220.

Airports are in contact with Eurocontrol and will advise them if a runway is unservicable or whatever, and this information will be made available to arriving flights as a supplement to the ATIS stuff.

Even without all this useful info, generally speaking, you will know the winds at your destination most of the time. Maybe not the speed and exact direction, but you'll know more or less which way it is blowing from a long-range forecast. From this you can  surmise which approaches will be in use and from that you can plan an approach and stick the STAR in, but be ready to swap it for another if necessary. Quite often these things are a bit ad-hoc anyway, with ATC telling you to perhaps skip a bit of the procedure and go direct to a certain fix for the approach or whatever. 

Since you don't have all that logistical support, a good way around it all to maintain realism, is to look on FlightRadar24 and see which way airliners are coming in at your airport of choice, then, if you use real-world weather in your sim, you can expect to do the same. In fact you can even do this in the sim itself and see what live traffic is doing, because MSFS is basically using the same ADS data that sites such as FlightRadar24 are using, but since flightRadar24 will work on your phone, you can prop your phone up next to your monitor whilst you fly and that will serve as your substitute for an ACARS report.

Edited by Chock
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Alan Bradbury

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Thanks all.  

It seems odd to me that there's no way to find out what runways an airport is currently using for landings and takeoffs.  As I say, in Vancouver, the northern runway (26R/8L) is used for landings and the southern runway (26L/8R) is used for take-off.  All the time.  Yet this doesn't appear to be published anywhere.]

I'm sure most other airports with parallel runways have similar practices... Heathrow, SFO, LAX, etc.  How do you find out?  It seems dumb to just arbitrarily choose a runway when building a flight plan without knowing what is conventionally used for take-off and landings.

Edited by Virtual-Chris

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So if there’s no way to readily identify what runways are used for landing vs takeoff... what is everyone doing when planning a flight?
 

I gather at least some use the weather to plan an approach direction but if the airport has multiple or a couple parallel runways, how do you select your runway?  Arbitrarily? 

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Sometimes If you're lucky, when planning a flight in MSFS, you can scroll in close on the airport and see the little green planes flying around. Just see which runway they're flying too.


James

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Just check flightradar24 or similar. That's actually what we're doing in the real thing to get an idea which rwy is active. General wind direction will stay the same in shorter flights if the weather is stable. For longer flights we use the ACARS or listen to the ATIS which is giving information about the active rwy.

Edited by onurair

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