Hey everyone, this is going to be a long one so bear with me
I’m going to ask about a few instances that aren’t exactly connected to one another, and it’s going to be about how these things work in real life and in sim.
So, let’s say I’ve got a plane (Non commercial ones such as the C152, DA62, DHC-2, etc) I want to fly VFR with no particular destination in mind, or a flight from one airport to another.
How would you plan that as realistically as possible?
How do you choose your route?
Now, let’s say I want to fly a private jet, not exactly commercial but you’re not going to fly a CJ4 VFR right?
How am I going to plan the routes and altitudes for that scenario if I only know about my departure and arrival?
Next, let’s say I want to fly an actual airliner, as far as destinations go it’s pretty much set in stone by the company right?
If so, where can I get real life routes for a company?
If I have get a simple x > y destination how do I plan the actual route, altitudes and such?
How do I know where I’m supposed to start my flight (Parking) and where I’m supposed to shut down?
And lastly, basically the same as actual airlines, but the old ones which flew the A310, Bae146, MD80, the upcoming Fokker F28.
I’ve tried to find real life routes for ages but came up with nothing, how can I know where they used to fly so I could recreate routes like they used to be?
[I am planning to use Navigraph because I really liked it like a year ago when I played much more often, if that helps]
Thanks to anyone reading all of that and let me know if I’m asking the wrong questions
The first thing recommend is grabbing the free an excellent LittleNavMap (LNM)
Run this alongside MSFS and it will show you moving map updated in real time. All airports also shown, theres a lot of functions , beyond the scope of my reply. The manual is very very good!
While LNM can be used with a single screen it comes into its own if you have 2 or more monitors.
If you want to plan realistically then you will need a basic understanding of some rules and principles. Start here for a good overview:
GA flight planning has been made brutally easy thanks to apps , you will see GA pilots IRL with iPads, most likely loaded with ForeFlight.
But I suggest you start simple: spawn at an airport, keep LNM running noting where nearby airports are. If you click on an airport LNM will give you the heading needed to get to it and the distance, elevation etc Point the nose towards it and off you go.
You will need a basic math calculation to know when to descend. Read this:
To get ideas of where to fly using airliners go to the horses mouth, the airline tracker sites:
and
These sites allow you to filter by airplane type which is extremely useful for us gamers. For example to only see airborne A320neos you would type: A20N, for Boeing 737-800 it will be: B738
With VR in GA planes, you start with pencil and paper. You plot your course directly toward your destination, but you have to account for the winds, keeping in mind the winds aloft can be MUCH different from the ground.
If there are any airfields on your route you will have to worry about crossing controlled airspace. Any controlled airspace will have rules about how high or close you can go in their space. I had a nuclear facility along the route of my solo that I couldn’t fly over.
Me, I just let weather and whim determine my routes. I usually aim for ~4000ft for cruise in GA planes and ~20000ft in jets. I turn ATC voices off and ignore all airspace rules.
If you want something a bit more basic (it’s also good practice so you will learn for the future) try the following which I’ve found very easy to do. This is for PC - if you’re an X-Boxer I’m not sure if it would be the same. Remember that flight planning is not a plug-and-play action, you do need to do some work first! I actually enjoy this element of flight simming.
But for getting started you ought to have installed Little Navmap (free) and SimBrief (also free). It’s worth having a browse through the LNM manual, it’s very comprehensive but not too difficult for a beginner.
Decide what aeroplane you wish to fly and your departure and destination.
For GA aircraft in VFR use LNM, entering your departure and destination first, then putting in “way-points” by clicking on the map so you avoid controlled airspace, clearly shown in LNM. You can also input a parking stand, just zoom into your departure airport and look for a suitable parking stand - green dots usually - right click and select “make XX your departure point.” It is also preferable to tell LNM what type of aircraft you are flying to make it’s planning more accurate although initially you don’t have to. Then export it to MSFS.
For airliners and IFR, use SimBrief - follow it’s own guides but basically you prepare a proper flight plan, as in real life, and SimBrief will do all the work including STARs, SIDs and a suitable route and altitude for you - just a caveat, you’ll need to tell it what aircraft type you are flying but it does have a reasonable list to work from, select the nearest type. Using it’s addon, SimBrief Downloader, export it to the sim and there you are.
Once you’ve done a few plans and flights it all becomes logical and straightforward. Enjoy!
Edit - I usually put my SimBrief IFR plans through LNM, modify as needed (parking stand), then export to the sim. This means your plan can be followed in LNM and IMO also makes a better job of telling the in-sim ATC what you are intending to do
Your best bet is to use the world map for flight planning. It’s the easiest to use and it’s built into the sim itself. Just choose a departure and destination airport, choose the desired flight type (VFR, IFR) and it will assemble a flight plan for you. Then you can edit your cruise altitude (Navlog button) and it will fill in the needed altitudes. You can even choose departure and approach procedures and the plan will be updated accordingly. It may not give you the most realistic routes, but it’s a great way to start, easy to use visual utility that doesn’t require any external services or accounts. Upon loading the flight, the plan will be pre-loaded into the navigation system (doesn’t work with the Airbus A310).
If you’re looking for real-life airline routes, you can just check out FlightRadar24 or a similar website to get ideas where to fly.
I fly almost exclusively GA/VFR, so I’m right there with you on your first question. But since I generally fly planes with Garmin screens, I’m flying with GPS assistance. I used to set up my destination airport in the world map and then let the sim populate the magenta path in the Garmins. But lately, I’ve been doing things a little different. I set both start and destination in the map to get a general bearing to use when I take off, but then I delete the destination before clicking Fly Now (and re-selecting my parking spot, but that’s another thread).
Once I’m in the plane on the ramp, I fire up the engines to let them warm up. Then I hit the -D> button on the PFD and dial in my destination airport. I hit Enter once, then let that sit there waiting for the last click of the Enter button. I preset everything in the autopilot, which engages the Flight Director without the servos trying to control everything. With the FD set to Heading mode and the heading bug set to the runway direction, I can engage the AP’s servos shortly after takeoff. When cleared to proceed, I then turn my heading bug to the course I got from the World Map. After that, I hit the Enter button on the direct-to route, make sure my CDI is following the GPS/FMS input (bearing indicator will be magenta instead of green), and engage Nav mode on the autopilot.
From there, I can sit back and enjoy the scenery until I get close to my destination. My descents are generally 1000 feet/minute, so if I’m at 10k’, I’m watching my ETE countdown on the MFD to get to about 12 minutes. I then set my desired pattern altitude and descent rate, adjust power so I don’t overspeed, and start looking for my destination’s listing in the Nearest Airport section of the ATC popup.
Within all of this, it’s up to you whether you use Flight Following or not. I generally don’t, because if you fly through a tiny corner of one control zone, you end up getting handed off every couple of minutes. Instead, I fly in peace and quiet without ATC assistance or following until I reach my destination. At uncontrolled airports, I still report my position and intentions, and I work with the tower on controlled airport.
Thanks everyone for the detailed answers, so as far as I understand, using SimBrief for IFR flights is basically the way to do it the most realistic way?
And also, is choosing a departure and arrival something you’re supposed to do or is it given to you?
And which one would you say is better to use alongside Simbrief, LNM or Navigraph?
For aircraft that are no longer operational, will Simbrief generate realistic routes for them given I’m setting up the aircraft’s profile?
I’m an amateur and my knowledge of aviation and game has been obtained through the master source of it all. The internet
In general I use SimBrief for IRF and SkyVector for VFR. You can use the departure and arrival airport approach charts to support with both IFR and VFR procedures (Google them, best alternative for paying tons of money for Navigraph).
Departure and arrival procedures are determined a few moments before executing each of them, at least for VFR. IRL (and it works on the game too), by communicating your takeoff intentions with ATC you’ll be given the departure runway (this is based on wind on the game, as it is done IRL, which is very cool). Then you can choose your specific departure procedure based on the runway you’re taking off. If you’re using SimBrief, you can plan that ahead, because it gives you the departure runway based on the same criteria. If you leave real time weather on during the gameplay, you’ll probably be assigned to depart on the same runway as SimBrief told you (again, very cool in my amateur perspective).
Same concept for arrival, but the runway is obtained in communication with the tower when you’re getting close to it.
I’m not sure how SimBrief changes the routes based on aircraft profile, but I know it is used by pros, so it’s probably good enough. I know SimBrief uses routes from real life. There are a bunch of cool videos you can find on Youtube with people teaching how to plan routes using these tools that everyone mentioned in this topic. Take some time to look at them, I’m confident they’ll be valuable for you sim play =)
I use Little NavMap for VFR flying and Navigraph for IFR flights. I sometimes uses SimBrief fro flight planning and other times I just select the departure and destination in the sim and request in IFR of low or high altitude depending on the length flight. Short flights I use low altitude IFR.
For VFR you can also select depart and destination in the sim and by default it uses VFR. You can then use Little NavMap to decide which runway you want to use.
routes you can make up, ie plan your own, nor do you have to file a flight plan unless your going into a controlled airport or using IFR and or flight following
here in the US at least you can fly VFR without talking to anyone so long as your departing and landing at ‘uncontrolled airports’ - believe it or not thats most of them, most all of your local or regional airports are uncontrolled
you just radio to ‘traffic’ on the Unicom channel, meaning your just talking to other ‘possible’ pilots in the area
i made a challenge of traveling all over the US without going into controlled airspace in fsx
its getting harder tho, all the airports have extended their airspace untill its hard to route thru under or around as easily
of course im talking GA only here
Sure, while flying in Class E and G this is allowed (though pretty frowned upon) however if wish to transition D and C you need to be in contact with ATC and you can’t enter Class B without a clearance (the LA SFRA is like the only exception I know of). Flyway charts are great to avoid Class B though picking up flight following is a good idea regardless.
While I know this discussion is probably oriented around a sim hobbyist perspective, I’d recommend a slight word of caution about all this, especially if you potentially have interest in real-life flying. As I’m coming from a military aviation background rather than civilian, things might be somewhat different between the two realms, but I was first taught and made to do everything the hard way before then being taught and allowed to do things the easy way. Among other things, at some level, the most important thing is the construct/map/plan in your head of what you intend to do in the flight, which is then planned out using current publication, charts, various real-time info (weather, NOTAMs, etc.), and other electronic tools and so forth to make sure that plan is actually doable. What tools you use are going to depend on various who, what, where, when, etc., and what you decide is best might be different from what another person likes. I’ll try to answer some of your questions in a somewhat abbreviated fashion, but just keep in mind there’s a whole lot more depth to dive into on most of these subjects, and I’m doing this mostly from memory, so there are probably things I’m forgetting off the top of my head here. (Also, I’m talking from a U.S. perspective, so things may be different in other regions.)
For VFR, probably your main planning considerations, aside from the reason for the flight, relate to fuel and weather, and for the latter that’s mainly the previously-mentioned winds aloft and avoiding instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) if applicable. (Fuel-wise, this generally ends up meaning taking a fairly direct route to the places of relevance in your flight.) You also want to figure out what visual and instrument navigation references you want to use to get where you are going; as VFR pertains largely to separation from other aircraft and from terrain, you still want to have multiple means of knowing where you are and where you want to be.
Breaking out a VFR sectional chart, though websites like SkyVector and other tools will suffice for our purposes here, you also want to check for airspace you want to avoid, like certain special-use airspace or areas you shouldn’t fly VFR through, like Class Bravo airspace, though some you can avoid vertically rather than laterally. There are some publications on the Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) website that are basically cleared for public release that are newer versions of what I had to use in flight school, and I recommend at least skimming through a few of them; this one on visual navigation has a bunch of info on reading charts, airspace, visual separation, etc.: P-767.20200409.pdf (navy.mil)
Also looking at the IFR enroute low altitude chart isn’t a bad idea either, as it’s somewhat less cluttered, and there’s not really anything keeping you from more-or-less flying a low altitude IFR airway at a VFR altitude if you are traveling for some distance.
Looking at the weather, probably the first resource I’d go to for any flying in the U.S. is the NOAA/NWS Aviation Weather Center website: AWC - Aviation Weather Center; I presume there are similar resources for other regions. Various things to check for include looking at METARs and TAFs for your departure and destination airfields as well as any divert fields, forecast cloud layers (as this may limit the altitudes you can chose to fly at, etc.), winds aloft, and so forth. I strongly recommend at least skimming quickly through this other CNATRA training pub on aviation weather to get an idea of the things to consider (as well as info on how to read METARs and TAFs, etc.): P-770.pdf (navy.mil)
Speaking of winds aloft, the general idea here is that in a no-wind situation you expect a certain amount of time and therefore fuel to fly a particular leg of your route, but if you get a strong headwind it can make you take a significantly longer time to transit that leg with correspondingly higher fuel burn. A winds aloft chart looks like this (with altitude and time of forecast selectable), and there’s also a numerical data version, etc.:
In much of my training, we would use some form of paper “flight log,” and while this is mostly supplanted by electronic flight planning tools, I would suggest doing this at least once by hand at some point to get a feel of what goes into the electronic versions. Among other things, doing one of these by hand requires you to have various charts and tables of fuel burn rates specific to the aircraft you are flying, which the electronic tools greatly simplify (and then you can just print it out to bring with you in the plane as well as having it on a tablet or such). The idea here is that you plot out each leg of your route and figure what the winds are expected to be on each and therefore how long it takes and how much fuel is used; you’ll generally have some sort of desired reserve fuel to get to a divert field with some amount left, etc., so this will show you if you can actually get where you’re trying to go safely.
Nothing technically keeps you from flying a private jet VFR, though you’ll probably waste some fuel because you would have to fly lower below FL180 (Class Alpha airspace FL180-FL600 is IFR only).
Altitude-wise, you’ll have to figure out the aircraft specific info about climb performance, etc. to see what’s a reasonable altitude for the given distance you’re going; for a relatively short hop, you might not have time to reach a higher altitude before you have to go back down again to start your approach. Other than that, there’s this guy that in the legend of the IRF enroute charts:
Basically, for VFR if the course of the leg is in the west (magnetic) half you’d plan on flying at an even thousand plus 500, and odd thousand plus 500 in the east half. So, if I’m trucking around VFR for a decent distance with a jet in the sim INCONUS (for me typically the F/A-18E or Citation Longitude), I’ll just go to 16,500ft for a westbound course and 17,500ft for an eastbound one.
Another thing to keep in mind are avoiding various airspace vertically; you’ve probably seen variations of this diagram, and as Class Bravo, Charlie, and Delta go to 10,000AGL, 4,000AGL, and 2,500AGL respectively, you can often go over them if you can plan the appropriate altitude:
Also, note this number on the VFR sectional charts, which is Minimum Safe Altitude for the block of the chart and provides at least 1,000 ft of obstacle clearance from the highest terrain/building/tower in the vicinity:
I’ll defer to the airliner subject matter experts here, as that’s not really my area of knowledge; my assumption is that generally your dispatch will send you all this stuff to load in the plane, and you just review it.
At least for non-airliners, for both VFR and IFR you can generally plan for and request a particular departure, but it will depend on the runway in use and so forth, so there’s some chance you’ll get something different, and it’s a good idea to review all the departures going out of the field in advance. Basically the same for approaches, but obviously you can only shoot the approaches you have equipment to fly, and again the landing runway could change if the weather is different from expected. In real life I believe I would generally file for a particular approach in advance, but often flying to my home field we’d just request a practice approach for training purposes when checking in with the approach controller. In MSFS, I believe you can choose the departure/approach in the world map, and I think you can request a different approach in the ATC menu IIRC. I recommend checking out this CNATRA pub for IFR planning, reading approach plates, etc.: P-871.pdf (navy.mil)
I haven’t used this, but just keep in mind that without detailed info on the specific aircraft’s performance you’ll probably need to do some trial and error to make sure it matches well with what happens in the sim.
I discussed weather a bit above, but for the sim whatever gets you the info you need is probably fine.
Hopefully at least some of this info is a bit useful, if just for a starting point…
