How do you determine and calculate a reasonably realistic cruising altitude for IFR flights? (E.g TBM 930, Grand Caravan)
Do all of you actually go the full way, with performance tables, cloud layers, winds and icing etc, or do you have some simple way of doing this, that is a tad more immersive than using the built in flightplanner, but still not as painful as having to deal with the time consuming process of figuring it out to the last notch?
Simbrief will generate a reasonable cruising altitude, at least if you use a proper profile for your airplane. Not sure if they have one for the TBM 930 and Grand Caravan.
edit: They have one for the Grand Caravan (listed as “C208 - Cessna 208B”), but none for the TBM 930, only for the TBM 900. Not sure if they are close enough performance-wise. You may be able to find an unofficial profile, though.
It’s more or less automatized IRL. Anyway, a dispatcher will look over it and change altitudes if necessary.
I flown round the world with the TBM and I took max. FL whenever it was possible. When I came to legs where I was near the max. range of the TBM, I took weather and wind charts and tried to figured out the best suitable FL for max Range. I.E, i flown with the TBM over Antarctica and made a flight which was flown IRL. The IRL flight were 2 legs but I flown it in once because the destination Airport was not available in MSFS. In fact, I was almost at max Range and I had to play with the enroute wind. I changed routing and altitudes made small detours and finally I arrived with the last gallones of fuel.
U can use the TBM900 profile. Anyhow, if it’s not fit perfectly you can change it by yourself. I made a complete LNM profile on my own. Was before I used Simbrief.
Aircraft performance profiles, charts have high or low routes, low routes will depend on climb profiles and pressure, generally airlines and larger biz jets will be from 18,000 to 45,000 ft. Falcon 5X and the Gulfstream G650 all currently fly the highest with a service ceiling of 51,000 feet.
KATL Atlanta to KTPA is about an hour flight time. Get to top of decent then almost time to descend.
Usually, as high as possible will generally be in your favor when it comes to fuel savings. The only exception is when the wind really starts to take a major chunk of your ground speed.
For comfort, try to plan 15 minutes of level cruise time at the minimum.
If the aircraft isn’t pressurized, the max is 12,500’ for cruise.
If there are icing conditions, keep your cruise altitude outside of it. If it’s a thick layer, stay below it. If it’s a few thousand feet, you could punch through it and cruise above it if your aircraft is certified for flight into known icing.
Europe has more specific IFR requirements for City-Pair level capping. See the Route Availability Document published by Eurocontrol for more information.
Sometimes if I feel like killing time, I’ll fly the whole route at the highest MEA enroute. Saves me the planning effort if someone already did obstacle clearance calculation for me.
Simbrief is a fantastic resource, it acts as an automatic dispatcher.