While importing a Simbrief flight plan through the MSFS EFB works fine, I'm getting an error when I try to import weights from the Simbrief part of the EFB.

I get the following message in the EFB:

And error occurred while importing: error: expecting a pilot section.
 

Searched the net (even used AI but it turned out it's not that smart as they make us try to believe) but I can't find much about this error and so I have no clue what "expecting a pilot section" means.

Anybody in here knows what "expecting a pilot section" means or what the problem is?

So, it looks like, on the Payload Page of the EFB, you cannot import weights from SimBrief. When you click that SimBrief icon on top RHS of the Payload Page, you get an error message, instead of the transient green message, at top, indicating that "SimBrief Weights Loaded"...

You have the SimBrief Pilot ID set correctly on the Options/Settings Page of the EFB...just checking...? Also, on the SimBrief Flight Planner, you selected the iniBuilds A320 neo V2 (Airframe)?

It seems to work fine for my A320neo (V2).

SimBrief ID and airplane are correct.

The EFB i'm talking about is the one you bring up with the TAB key, not the one on the left window.
The one on the window works fine, I can send over payload data to the MCDU but it's the pop-up EFB I'm having problems with.
I have the Simbrief add-on in there and when importing weights through this EFB i'm getting this message And error occurred while importing: error: expecting a pilot section.
But I don't get that all the time, it doesn't give an error for some flights and does for others.
Thing is that i have no clue why I'm getting that error.

5 hours ago, Lange_666 said:

SimBrief ID and airplane are correct.

The EFB i'm talking about is the one you bring up with the TAB key, not the one on the left window.
The one on the window works fine, I can send over payload data to the MCDU but it's the pop-up EFB I'm having problems with.
I have the Simbrief add-on in there and when importing weights through this EFB i'm getting this message And error occurred while importing: error: expecting a pilot section.
But I don't get that all the time, it doesn't give an error for some flights and does for others.
Thing is that i have no clue why I'm getting that error.

Oh…I see, you mean the MSFS2024 (stock) EFB. I do not normally use it with iniBuilds Airbus a/c, except for terrain map displays.

I recall having some (occasional) issues with it for SimBrief import, relating to other a/c, but I think I’d sorted those issues out with on-line AI.

On 1/31/2026 at 9:19 AM, Lange_666 said:

SimBrief ID and airplane are correct.


Thing is that i have no clue why I'm getting that error.

What OFP format are you using in Simbrief? Any specific airline or a general one? Maybe based on the OFP format, the built-in MSFS EFB is not able to read it correctly??

LIDO
Since I use just the A320NeoV2 from within MSFS2024 with no particular airline or special livery so I don't see any reason to change that and if it's needed then honestly I don't know what airline would work.
Airac is AIRAC 2403 - 21 Mar 24 to 17 Apr 24 (the other is a paid subscription, not worth it for the few times I use it).

Been thinking of dropping Simbrief all together and just use the ingame EFB's flightplanner to do the job. Probably a lot less fuzz... 🙂
  

Edited February 1Feb 1 by Lange_666

19 minutes ago, Lange_666 said:

LIDO
Since I use just the A320NeoV2 from within MSFS2024 with no particular airline or special livery so I don't see any reason to change that and if it's needed then honestly I don't know what airline would work.
Airac is AIRAC 2403 - 21 Mar 24 to 17 Apr 24 (the other is a paid subscription, not worth it for the few times I use it).

Been thinking of dropping Simbrief all together and just use the ingame EFB's flightplanner to do the job. Probably a lot less fuzz... 🙂
  

Hi:

Yes, you can probably do that.

However, many (payware) MSFS airliners come equipped with full integration with SimBrief (with professional grade flight plan (OFP) support) and such.

Just this past week or two, I flew the ATR, A340, A350, with all their EFBs making use of seamless SimBrief integration, which I personally prefer.

It depends on your own preference, of course.

On 1/30/2026 at 5:12 PM, Lange_666 said:

And error occurred while importing: error: expecting a pilot section.

This happened to me a few times with the Blackbox BN2 islander for MSFS 2024. If in the passengers option of Simbrief I select the full pax number, I got the error. If I manually type in the passenger number or type in one less than the full amount, it loads the weight fine. Might be worth trying that. 

Just used to onboard EFB with SimBrief data where it does work and I get everything imported into the MCDU. The only problem I have there is entering the weight for calculating the take-off values. The value is in lbs but I can only enter a 3digit with one decimal there. Did read somewhere here in the forum that it needs to be entered in tons instead of pounds and then I can get take-off values calculated. So that works (but the T/O values are way bigger then if I do the same thing in the FBW A320 which then again bugs me...).

@FrankSalo
Gonna play with those settings later on again on the next try.
I checked when I tried the above procedure and the passenger option was set to Auto in SimBrief. It filled in 132 (out of 186 max) but even then the ingame EFB came with the error when trying to import weights from SimBrief.
Gonna try manual or none on the next run.

I also asked the same question about the error (Ad error occurred while importing: error: expecting a pilot section)  over at the Navigraph SimBrief subforum:
Got this as response:

This sometimes happens when:

• The wrong file type is being imported, or

• The file was modified, truncated, or exported from another tool

SimBrief import only works with:

• SimBrief-generated OFP files (TXT / XML)

Please check that you are creating/editing/generating a flight plan in SimBrief, without external editing.

The only thing is see here is that I press the generate button again in the ingame EFB when the flightplan is loaded from SimBrief. For me that does not really count as external editing and since it's a SimBrief plugin in the MSFS2024 EFB imo this should not be a problem + one can edit the plan in the ingame EFB (in the SimBrief plugin section) and re-generate it again.
Need to try that...

Still makes me wonder what the "expecting a pilot section" in the error message means.

Edited February 2Feb 2 by Lange_666