Wonder why ATC sends you to insanely high altitudes on IFR flights, like 43,000 ft, even for short to medium regional routes, even when flying business jets like the Citation. I usually ask 2 or 3,000 ft decrease and luckily the request is accepted. Some kind of bug?
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It’s truly worthless. It’s broken and has been since day 1 when they took the old ATC from FSX.
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When you select IFR High Airways on your flight plan, they will assign you the maximum ceiling altitude that the aircraft can cruise at.
Citation can reach that altitude, so they set that by default. If you want a lower altitude, you can change it in the NAV LOG button on the world map.
Personally, I quite like it because I always like to cruise at the maximum altitude all the time. 39,000 ft on A320neo or 41,000 ft on A330-900neo even when I fly at 1 hour flight. The higher I go, the faster the ground speed and less resistance to save more fuel.
And the navlog cruising altitude can automatically detect whether you’re west-bound or east-bound and can assign you odd/even number cruising altitude based on it. I don’t even have to think about it too much.
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The problem is when It tells you to descen and then 5 miles out from the airport they tell you to climb, as an example, to 15,000
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I’ve resorted to to muting the ATC volume to zero, it’s pointless.
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I always check the nav log on the world map when I plan a flight. If I choose IFR high altitude airline then the cruise altitude is usually 40000 or 41000 feet for the 787. The ATC always adheres to that. If it’s a short flight then you can edit the cruise altitude in the nav log and the ATC will keep themselves to it, so it’s never a problem for me really. Any aircraft you fly, just set the cruise altitude to what’s comfortable for that plane if what the nav log offers isn’t correct.
There are areas where it will do this and it’s truly annoying. It has to descent to 3000 ft, you’re 5 NM away from the airport, and then tells you to climb to some ridiculously high altitude for no apparent reason.
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I recommend using the published approaches/departures & utilizing the arrivals rather than using the “direct” option. I’ve noticed that when flying direct to a published approach and/or not utilizing a published departure for IFR if there is a restricted airspace in my way I’ll be instructed to climb / descend over or under it.
The problem is when It tells you to descen and then 5 miles out from the airport they tell you to climb, as an example, to 15,000
Absolutely no point in using the in-game ATC as it’s not only lacking, it’s also super inconsistent, criminal and often plain wrong and confusing. I disabled it after my first few hours in MSFS, more than a year ago. Comparing it to FSX’s ATC (developed 15+ years ago) there was very little difference and the issues I remembered back from 2006 were still there.
If you don’t want to try multiplayer solutions with human ATCs (which don’t always work because most airspaces won’t be controlled anyway), then at least try to use 3rd party addons such as Pilot2ATC which do a much better job than the default ATC.
So the only logic that MSFS often uses is the service ceiling. For the Citation it would be as simple as:
a) use the manufacturer’s recommendation:
DISTANCE (nm) ... ALTITUDE (ft)
0-99 ... 4000-12000
100-199 ... 12000-24000
200-299 ... 23000-31000
300-499 ... 30000-39000
500-999 ... 38000-43000
1000+ ... 41000-45000
b) compensate for positive/negative wind components on those levels
SimBrief (which is obviously much more refined in flight planning) does something similar to MSFS as it always defaults to service ceiling although the setting is called “AUTO”, but at least the OFP will provide a little more info on adjacent FLs so that you can pick the most efficient.
My point is that more effort should have been made by the devs both for ATC and flight planning. Let’s see if this is improved in the future.
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Even then, the in-sim ATC will nearly never descend you in any kind of reasonable time to make the arrival. You need to start descending way sooner than the ATC will instruct you to make that arrival altitude constraint. And as soon as you reach that TOD point and begin descending on your own, ATC will start badgering you to climb back to your assigned altitude. The only way around that is to request step-down descents periodically, which is both clumsy and inconvenient.
Hmm, I never had service ceiling FL assigned by the SimBrief, usually getting between FL340 and FL360 for a320 and FL290 for TBM. Does it do that for Citation? Just generated this for a320 to check:
Dunno, perhaps it uses different logic for those airliners or it depends on the routing suggested by others in the past.
For the Citation I just tried creating a random flight plan from LGAV to LBPD (320nm route) and it selected FL400, which is a bit outside the 300-499nm range of FL300-390. Then I changed it to LGAV-LBSF (380nm) and Simbrief chose FL230, which is way too low for a private jet. It’s frequently a bit inconsistent.
update: yeah, it’s probably based on what others have suggested in the past in Simbrief. For the second trip, I chose a different routing and altitude immediately changed from FL230 to FL430 (which is way outside the manufacturer’s recommendation for such a route distance).
I wonder if there’s some sort of real-life tool that allows pilots to select the most efficient cruising altitude.
I think it depends on the aircraft. The ATC seems to be just put a generalised TOD to all the aircraft you flown. But for me when I fly the FBW A32NX, I usually descend on time using the ATC descent instruction timing.
I also hardly ever use V/S or FPA mode on my descent, except I’m on an RNAV approach close to the runway. But from cruising whenever I get the descent instructions I just set the new altitude and press it to do a LVL/CH on managed descent. Then I just let it do its own thing until I reached the altitude and ATC tells me a new altitude.
But this generally happens wen I already add the STAR and the Approach type into the flight plan long before I even start the flight. I know this isn’t realistic, but it’s the current way for me to do a full IFR flight without issues.
Succinct and to the point. And very accurate.
I came to the same conclusion very early on… and have not used it since.
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Yeah, I haven’t had that issue anymore since months as long as I use the default flight planner properly.
The TBM is rated for 31k feet I think and ATC routinely tries to get me to climb to 33k feet (where alarms go off because of cabin pressure issues apparently).
Anyway, ATC always tries to take me higher than I believe it’s rated for.
Well did you put 31,000 feet on the navlog cruising altitude in the flight plan?
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ATC uses the Cruise Altitude in the World Map Navlog. Also, flight plans created by the World Map planner are aircraft agnostic. That is, any aircraft can use any flight plan. The PIC has to verify that the aircraft can fly the flight plan. A C152 cannot fly non-stop from New York to Seattle without refueling. The Cruise Altitude needs to be appropriate for the aircraft.
If a C172 has 38,000 ft as the flight plan Cruise Altitude, ATC will instruct the C172 to climb to 38,000 ft even though that is impossible with a C172. If a B747 has 6,000 ft as the flight plan Cruise Altitude, ATC will not instruct it to climb higher that 6,000 ft. The exception is if a SID, STAR, or approach have higher waypoint altitude restrictions or minimums, ATC will issue climb/descent instructions higher than the Cruise Altitude.
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Couldn’t have said it better myself. That is spot on..
This is exactly the point. ATC is not verifying it for us, we need to take the responsibility and plan according to what the A/C can do.
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