I had a route planned from PHNL to NZAA and part way through the flight it all got a bit weird. Shortly after takeoff set up autopilot and started to follow the magenta line. Got to cruise FL 400 and about 3 to 4 hours into the flight I noticed that the plane was pointing North. From my basic geography I do know New Zealand is roughly South West of Hawaii. It seemed as i had reached the waypoint DULCE (i think), the IFR could not cope with the route and just turned around.
Has anyone else experienced issues when crossing the Pacifc? I wonder if this has anything to do with crossing the International Dateline?
i have experienced that this weekend when i did the project sunrise flight from New York To Sydney. As soon as i hit the first oceanic waypoint in the pacific the airplane did a U turn and was heading back and i had to delete multiple waypoints to get it back on a more normal course. I tested it afterwards with a few other routes going the same way and they all have me doing a U Turn.
Yes, it has something to do with crossing the International Date Line. I had this issue before flying the 787 from Japan to Hawaii which crosses the IDL.
So while the flight plan path is showing a U turn all the way back until it reaches the next waypoint the long way around. But when I actually fly it, the aircraft doesn’t turn the same way and it just continues on to cross the IDL until it reaches the next waypoint. So while it can be confusing when the flight path is turning that way, since my aircraft doesn’t do the turn and just continues on, is when I think it’s not that big of an issue for me.
I retried the route and this time used SkyTrack Live Map so I could see what exactly was happening. Leaving PHNL and climbing to FL400 in the 787 it seems that as you near the equator and the International Date Line the sim can’t cope and the aircraft turns around.
Aproaching DULCE waypoint near the equator and the IDL
find the waypoints where the u turn starts and delete a few until u notice the flight plan going in the right direction once again that’s what i did to fix mine and continue on normally lol
Not that having done this sort of route a few times myself, it’s just a visual display bug on the screens/VFR map (presumably to do with the coordinate system when crossing the date line). If left alone, your aircraft will continue to follow the planned route correctly.
As u see there it is not just a visual bug it will for sure make a U-Turn but this only happens if u r going westbound over the pacific since i have done the returning flight from Sydney to JFK and also London to sydney with no issues like this, I have also put in a few different routes heading in the same direction and they all had that same issue at some point where it showed the magenta line heading back.
That screenshot isn’t crossing the date line though, so must be a separate issue to the one I’m talking about where the VFR map/screens shows a line going the wrong way around the whole world to link back up with the rest of your route when two waypoints cross the date line in the pacific. In those cases it’s just a visual bug and your aircraft continues to fly the plan as normal, at least in my experience.
