I seldom see this option in my ATC selections. Is there any way to get this option consistently? What triggers it? Thanks!

i believe u have to plan your flight as and IFR flight on the planning page in order to trigger it  but I am not sure.

oh and its bad  ,,it will get you killed,,,atleast in msfs..

20 minutes ago, AmeliaCat said:

i believe u have to plan your flight as and IFR flight on the planning page in order to trigger it  but I am not sure.

Negative, you need to be VFR,  Then if a Center is around, tune into it, and ask for flight following. In Europe at least,MSFS has flight following everywhere i went (beware its nearly useless, ATC gives you a squawk code and thats about it)

8 hours ago, leprechaunlive said:

Negative, you need to be VFR,  Then if a Center is around, tune into it, and ask for flight following. In Europe at least,MSFS has flight following everywhere i went (beware its nearly useless, ATC gives you a squawk code and thats about it)

But in Europe, Flight Following only exists in FS. It's not a service offered by ATC. 

10 minutes ago, BillC said:

But in Europe, Flight Following only exists in FS. It's not a service offered by ATC. 

In the UK they do have it. Think its called "Basic Service". Not sure about other countries. 

Edited October 25, 20205 yr by leprechaunlive

Just to add, flight following also gives the barometric pressure which is pretty helpful on flights into non atis airports.

In most cases you can just monitor frequencies and learn the altimeter settings.  No need to ask for flight following.

37 minutes ago, leprechaunlive said:

In the UK they do have it. Think its called "Basic Service". Not sure about other countries. 

FF and a UK Basic Service are very much NOT the same thing! Without going into sleep generating detail suffice to say you can have a Basic Service without radar coverage.

12 hours ago, leprechaunlive said:

Negative, you need to be VFR,  Then if a Center is around, tune into it, and ask for flight following. In Europe at least,MSFS has flight following everywhere i went (beware its nearly useless, ATC gives you a squawk code and thats about it)

I’ve been doing VFR but perhaps the trick is to tune to a center as you say. I’ve been tuning to the local tower at the start of a flight and don’t see the option. 

35 minutes ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I’ve been doing VFR but perhaps the trick is to tune to a center as you say. I’ve been tuning to the local tower at the start of a flight and don’t see the option. 

I would say it depends on where you're flying. If people are not seeing the flight following option I'd tend to think it was a bug, unless you're flying I'm the boonies. 

1 hour ago, Virtual-Chris said:

I’ve been doing VFR but perhaps the trick is to tune to a center as you say. I’ve been tuning to the local tower at the start of a flight and don’t see the option. 

If you pull up the ATC window the controlling center freq is there for you to choose on Line 1.  I have assigned the ATC window to a yoke button.

Edited October 25, 20205 yr by fppilot

On 10/25/2020 at 1:02 PM, mtr75 said:

I would say it depends on where you're flying. If people are not seeing the flight following option I'd tend to think it was a bug, unless you're flying I'm the boonies. 

It must depend on where you're flying.  I was in CYXX (Abbotsford) which is just outside of Vancouver and it didn't offer me an option to contact Vancouver Center... and as a result, no flight following option either.

I consistently get the flight following option once I leave the airport vicinity and tune the the appropriate center. The issue I have is that after tuning my transponder and flying for a while, the ATC menu items are all gone. So, I can’t cancel flight following nor can I communicate with my arrival airport (even if I tune the frequency manually) ATC will just tell me to switch back to the center I received the FF service from.  This happens when I have a VFR flight plan loaded  

anyone else seeing this?

Didn’t FSX have a Flight Following option?