How come ATC tells me to climb to FL250 in my C172? Impossible! Is ATC that dumb or is it broken code?
Looking at my IFR flight plans, the cruising altitude is set at 38,000 ft. Sending this flight plan to ATC, I am telling ATC that my C172 will be cruising at 38,000 ft. ATC uses the information I sent them, figures I know what I am doing and instructs me to climb above the aircraft service ceiling. If the same flight plan is used for an airliner, there is no problem following ATC climb instructions.
Is there a bug with the ATC allowing me to provide wrong information about my aircraft?
I created a new IFR flight plan with the cruising altitude of 7,000 ft. When using this flight plan in the C172, ATC NEVER gave me instructions to climb above 7,000 ft! ATC never instructed me to climb to 10,000 ft followed immediately by a command to descend to 9,000 ft. I submitted the same flight plan using an airliner. Again, ATC never gave instructions for the airliner to climb above 7,000 ft!
It appears that the flight plan cruising altitude is a hard ceiling for ATC commands. MSFS doesn’t do any checking of flight plans to verify it confirms to aircraft limitations. ATC commands conform to the cruising altitude information submitted by the pilot.