A32NX follows NAV if all you do is load a flight plan, right?

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Earlier today, I started MSFS and once in the world map, loaded a Simbrief plan and hit Fly. Period.

I did not enter a Departure airport, I just loaded my plan, hit Fly, and my aircraft spawned at my chosen airport, on my FP runway. At this point, I did not look at the Flypad or go near the MCDU, I remained in Cockpit view, released the brakes and took off. No SID, no STAR, as I hadn’t touched the MCDU. Once aloft on runway heading, with my destination somewhere behind me, the second I pushed the knob to enter Managed Heading, my craft banked and joined the FP route automatically. This felt great as I had been having a lot of problems with Simbrief and A32NX integration recently but this feels strange…

My AC appeared to follow the route perfectly and with what seemed like full ATC. As I was without a STAR, I pulled the Heading knob near my Arrival facility, headed for the feather, caught the ILS and landed. But, what gives? Is this normal? I had programmed the Flypad OS3 to load plans automatically beforehand but can this action alone explain this flight’s ‘too easy’ behavior?

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Moin.
Maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but I would always recommend starting at a gate “cold and dark” and then going through the complete starting procedure. Because when you start on the runway, something is always missing.
You can find very good videos in all languages ​​for the startup sequence on Youtube.

Gruß
Dieter

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It’s not recommended to have the FlyPad setup to load flight plan from the MSFS world map. This is because there’s a lot of missing data and information that the aircraft needs to fly the plane properly. You’re already using SimBrief, so just set the FlyPad to NONE to prevent using the flight plan loaded in the world map, even it it’s from SimBrief.

Just load the SimBrief flight plan to world map for ATC clearance purposes. Then use the MCDU to INIT REQUEST the flight plan from SimBrief directly. That way, the aircraft have everything it needs to fly it properly.

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grüß dich! I was trying to show how simple it was for me to get a flight plan inside the A32NX, take off, and have a working NAV display, even if incomplete. I couldn’t understand how easily I could get this done after despairing of ever getting my NAV display to work these last few days. I’ve started hundreds of cold & dark airliners successfully but, recently, I’ve had problems getting Simbrief and the A32NF to cooperate. This is no doubt due to something I do (or don’t do) but the problem remains. I have not had much success in seeing a good, complete flight plan in my NAV display in the last two or three weeks.

I’ve watched several videos on flight plans and general flight procedures yet I’m still experiencing occasional navigation or MCDU-related glitches. Many videos are excellent to be sure yet are missing some of the information I’m looking for. Therefore, I would love finding a tutorial that would include all the steps that are required for FBW and Simbrief to integrate fully. By ‘detailed steps’, I mean a really complete, comprehensive sequence of actions that will insure the two apps cooperate and produce a workable NAV display. Assuming, of course, that I’ve prepared a good Simbrief plan ahead of time and downloaded it correctly. Does such a tutorial exist?

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Thanks, NeoKingRthur. Your thoughts are appreciated. When I started using the new Flypad, I set it to import data from Simbrief automatically and I suppose that’s why I didn’t have to click it upon starting a flight, as I described in my post. Now, per your suggestion, I’ve set my Flypad to ‘None’ in Options and flew the sim for testing purposes.

I started two flights, both from a runway, but was unable to see my flight plan in the NAV display. For the first flight, starting from the MCDU Menu page, I pressed the INIT page’s 2nd soft key on the right and hit INIT REQUEST* to load the plan; for my second try, I went with ATSU, AOC, then INIT/PRES at top left and I clicked the 5th soft key on the right for the plan. I don’t know which method you had in mind.

In both cases, I had loaded my flight plan from the world map to have ATC but hadn’t entered a Departure airport or anything else. Would a gate departure have made a difference? As I explained in a discussion with a previous correspondent, I’m searching for a very comprehensive tutorial on all this.

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So here’s the steps that I usually done for my flights:

  1. Create a SimBrief Flight plan (with SIDs and STARs assigned when possible), and download the MSFS .PLN file to your PC.
  2. Start MSFS, and go to the world map, select the A32NX aircraft, and Load Flight plan. Point to the location of where you downloaded the .PLN file from SimBrief. This will load the flight plan to the world map.
  3. Using the drop-down menu select the parking/gate that you want to start from. You can hover your mouse cursor over the parking spot that you want just to see which parking gate number it is, but don’t click on them. Use the dropdown from the top, this is to make sure the MSFS flight planner doesn’t recalculate a new route and maintains the same flight plan that you loaded.
  4. Choose your approach again from the drop down menu.
  5. Once you’re done, select the flight conditions that you prefer and start the flight. At this stage, the ATC will receive your full SimBrief flight plan and you start from the gate.
  6. Once you’re in the aircraft. First step is to go to the MCDU and press ATSU-> AOC, then INIT/PRES and request the data. Once this is populated, go back to the main menu and press the INIT page, and go to INIT REQUEST. This will load the SimBrief flight plan to the aircraft. Then you can go to the F-PLN page, and assign the SIDs and STARs and your approach.
  7. Then you can gain clearance from ATC and continue with your usual preparation until you’re ready to depart.

This is not a tutorial, but this is how I set up my MCDU on all my flights.

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This is normal. You can capture the ILS whether or not ATC asks you to. And you can capture it whether or not you have a STAR programmed into your FMS.
All you need is the “Arrival” runway of your flight plan page to be an “ILS” runway and the frequency needs to be in Rad-Nav page of the FMS. Then you just press the LS on the FCU button, and follow the magenta chevrons to be laterally and vertically aligned. And when you are close to being aligned press the, LOC (to lock-on laterally to localiser), then the APPR button (to lock the “G/S” - glideslope vertically), and then the AP button. Et voila!

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That’s great, Neo. I used to pick a departure gate by clicking on one of the white markers when setting up a Cold & Dark flight. I’ll use the drop-down from now on as I didn’t know this made a difference. I copied your comment and will use it step-by-step in my next flight. I’ll have a good look at your video asap. Thanks a bunch for your detailed reply.

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Thank you for your insight. I always use the APPR to grab the ILS but I tend to forget the LOC !

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I tried to watch it, but it’s a bit difficult to follow what you are doing with the mouse.
How about you do a narrated version of this?

By the way, those cabin announcements in Bahasa Indonesia language reminded of my childhood when travelling on Garuda F28s across Java – where I lived for 2 years!

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I concur. I found the MCDU sequence from 4:54 to 11:40 particularly hard to jot down as a guide for my own use. I’ll have to watch this in slow motion with VLC, otherwise I won’t be able to note the numerous steps. Sometimes I hear the keys being clicked but mostly I don’t because of ambient noise and can’t be sure whether a given key the mouse hovered over was pressed or not. The video is an excellent demonstration of a flight from start to finish but, as Neo said, it’s definitely not a tutorial. Thank you.

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Yeah, those extra clicks that happened offscreen is from FS2Crew app, it’s the F/O doing her flows and her own steps, so there are things that I didn’t do, because my F/O already do them.

I’m sure there are other experts who would be better at making tutorials. This is just the steps that I do that works for me. And there are a lot of steps that I skipped. Sorry if it’s too fast. It’s just become muscle memory for me and I just want to get started as soon as possible.