Thank you all for your help.
And realised it may be stupidity on my part.
I’ve worked out what’s gone wrong.
The Simbrief flight plan gives you an arrival runway but for some reason the FMC does not have the runway programmed in.
When I now load the flight plan I enter the arrival runway into the FMC manually and everything works.
Thank you do much for all your ides and help.
And sorry if I wasted anyone’s time.
I am not waiting for the ATC to prompt me to descend. But I calculate the TOD and about 5nm from the TOD ask the ATC to descend. So I can’t miss the approach.
And then I often get the approach instructions from the ATC.
Welcome on the forum @MilliUK!
In all fairness, the in-sim ATC and real-world procedures (what using Simbrief is as well imo) do not go together. So either calculate the TOD (or go 5NM before simbrief says to decent) yourself, or use online ATC like IVAO/VATSIM or an external ATC program like Pilot2ATC for more and better accuracy with ATC
Don’t pay too much attention to the stock ATC regarding descent.
You can also use the x3 rule to determine where you need to descend if you aren’t too sure.
Example is: if at 15,000 feet, take the 15, multiply by 3 = 45. You need approximately 45 miles to descend.
Add a bit more for good measure. If ATC hasn’t given you descent clearance at about 50 miles away in this instance, request lower and just do it. Disregard altitude messages after that.
Watch out when planning. A common mistake is simply planning to the destination airport. ATC does not assume a STAR or specific approach if you don’t put it into the plan. If you just plan a flight with the airport as the destination I find the AI will maintain cruise altitude until reaching that waypoint, even if you contacted approach and they cleared you for an approach.
Always confirm that you have planned to arrive at an STAR transition or approach fix with an altitude constrained for that waypoint. This way the ATC will usually direct you to descend at an appropriate distance to attain that fix/altitude. From there, fly the published STAR/approach and all should work nicely.
Thank you willisxdc
Thank you Simson166, I will keep playing
Thank you TheSevenflyer.
Thank you.
Usually on the FBW A32NX aircraft. When ATC tells me to descend, I set my altitude immediately and start the managed descent mode. I always end up at the right place at the right time all the time. I don’t use Open Descent or V/S mode. I just set the target altitude as ATC tells me, and push the knob to do a managed descent automatically.
Thank you.