Depends on what I'm flying.  TBM or airliners, I usually take what's recommended.  Cessna Caravan - uh no!  Simbrief has a habit of wanting to take me to FL210 even if I'm nowhere near mountains.  

I often use this resource for my flightplans:

https://edi-gla.co.uk/

 

 

I recommend using PFPX (Professional Flight Planner X). I takes into account weather data, route and airspace restrictions (real time) and aircraft performance. I use it to compute my fuel, route and cruise level and then use simbrief to generate the briefing package. Works like a charm.

I could write a six page answer on this due to being in both flightplanning for well over a decade, alas I wont.  Theres numerous reasons why flight levels are cappped by flightplanning systems varying from the obvious of weight, winds being better at certain levels,notams etc etc.

You also have to remember the differences in europe vs USA/Canada is in Europe you have an area of airspace "eurocontrol" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurocontrol  is has 41 member states, each with its own rules and regulations as to different flight levels, restricted zones, curfews, closures etc etc.

For example a simple 2 hour flight in europe you might pass through 8 of them, each of the 8 might have closures in their airspaces for military training for example, or areas that are used for certain specific things HMU for example https://natcma.com/height-monitoring-2/height-monitoring-3/  or airways closed to traffic at certain levels to create a good flow of traffic.

In the USA you can fly for 2 hours within the same FIR with tons of avaliable airspace to use hence why its a lot more common in the USA and Canada to do point to point waypoints/vor and not airways, youve got the space and ease to do it in, this is quite the opposite to europe..

if you look here nm.eurocontrol.int/RAD/2307/docs/RAD ALL.pdf  you will see all the restrictions on this current airac just within the eurocontrol countries.  Its 600 pages when you run a plan in pfpx or simbrief and find it comes up with an error on the validator , you can check the RAD to see why. 

Flightplanning is not as easy as people think, and it can only be learned properly from years of sitting on a desk doing it over and and over again. 

 

 

Edited July 2, 20232 yr by fluffyflops

Not sure what the problem is you have; Simbrief altitudes are spot on every time for me (if at all, they are a bit too low sometimes, but this depends on whether you use step altitudes). If it wasn't for ATC keeping me levelled off at FL220 for 10 minutes sometimes on those shorter routes, that is...

13 hours ago, Gerwil said:

I think Simbrief also takes the winds into consideration. I have done a lot of flights lately in the ATR between EGPH and EGPB. Sometimes I get Fl 240 and a few days later I get Fl 200 for the same route.

Edit: Weights were the same in these flights.

Yes, it does, while your FMC's optimum flight level doesn't take winds into account but mainly weight, so the actual optimum flight level is often slightly different from what the FMC wants. SimBrief also sometimes calculates step climbs not just based on reduced weight due to burning fuel but winds changing throughout the flight. Most of the time SimBrief is pretty much spot on.

Looking at the flight levels on FlightAware isn't ideal, because those are influenced by a lot of factors like real world traffic, weight, temporary restrictions, step climbs, ATC orders, etc. so whatever level the real world flight flew on may be unsuitable for your sim flight because you may have big differences for example in weight.

20 hours ago, regis9 said:

Since most European flights don’t have that information on Flightaware (why is that?) I just use whatever Simbrief gives me.

Doesn't Flightradar24 give a similar information?

6 hours ago, Nixoq said:

Most of the time SimBrief is pretty much spot on.

 

agreed I have in the past run a simbrief flightplan against a real world flightplan from both sabre/cae and lido and with the same routing,fuel contingencies, era's , etps, alternates etc etc and its been pretty much  identical output to Sabre and Lido, which is going to make sense if its using the same winds. 

 

1 hour ago, fluffyflops said:

agreed I have in the past run a simbrief flightplan against a real world flightplan from both sabre/cae and lido and with the same routing,fuel contingencies, era's , etps, alternates etc etc and its been pretty much  identical output to Sabre and Lido, which is going to make sense if its using the same winds. 

 

That's interesting. Seems like it's really that close.

4 hours ago, Nixoq said:

That's interesting. Seems like it's really that close.

Close enough for what we do to include Vatsim.