I would like to express a “wish” item here to see if anyone has a solution. Our always-helpful friend @MattNischan has recently indicated that the Working Title EFB “is now the primary flight planning interface in the sim.” (here) The problem is that the EFB cannot consistently read a flightplan in the common *.pln format. (It cannot consistently read either a FS2020 or a FS2024 format *.pln.)

My own experience, repeated frequently by others, is that often the EFB cannot read a flightplan such as “FLIGHT.PLN”. (My tests include an intervening user waypoint, not simply departure and arrival airports. The flightplan is generated using Little NavMap which has for years been able to create properly formatted *.pln files.) One hour the EFB can read the FLIGHT.PLN with all the intervening waypoints. All is perfect. Then, after shutting down the sim and coming back an hour later, the EFB cannot read the same FLIGHT.PLN. That is to say, the EFB has no departure airport, no arrival airport, no intervening waypoints. Nothing at all. (Then, again shutting down the simulator and computer, restarting the computer and simulator, and repeating the read attempt – the EFB may or may not be able to read the same flightplan.pln file. Sometimes it works; sometimes it fails.)

Thus the EFB is capable of reading the FLIGHT.PLN file. But it cannot do so consistently. You can understand just how important consistency is for the 2024 primary flight planning interface.

Does anyone have a trick to encourage the Working Title EFB to read *.pln flightplans?

Thanks,
Mike

WT has an active Discord forum, with a sub-forum dedicated to issues/questions around the EFB.

@Ricardo41 Thanks for the reference. Perhaps you would be so kind to point me toward the WT Discord sub-forum that you have in mind. (I did look around a while, but felt overwhelmed.) Much appreciated.

https://discord.com/channels/750764704175226992/1308465855889277068

@Ricardo41 Again, your help is much appreciated. I managed to spend three hours reading back through this Working Title Discord subforum. Learned lots of things. But nothing directly explaining why one can read a *.pln once and then completely fail to read the exact same *.pln the next time. Will have to figure out something here, but it is pretty hard to debug a system where one has no control over the process.

Hope our community has some ideas...

16 hours ago, MM said:

read a flightplan in the common *.pln format

The PLN format is no longer "common", it changed completely in a recent iteration of MSFS (2024). Initially myself and other developers reported this as a bug, because when you save a flight plan in the new format, it no longer contains the geographical coordinates for the waypoints - which tripped up many tools that just wanted to extract the route data. Also, the cruise altitude was incorrect (it read billions of feet). Unfortunately, I was told that the new format is better for us, and that it will remain this way (except for the cruise alt, which has been filed as a bug).

I wouldn't rule out the possibility that your trouble comes from the fact that MSFS no longer "understands" the old format. It may have to access the scenery API in the background (like we all have to do now), and that may potentially fail to yield the required data every time.

Another possibility would be that since they had to write a new importer, the new logic just has a few bugs...

I would expect MSFS to consistently read the new format. If it doesn't do that either, that would be worth reporting a bug to Asobo.

Edited April 27, 20251 yr by Lorby_SI