How the MCDU free text feature of FBW A32NX works?

I would like to know how I can message to other pilots using the free text feature of the FBW A32NX.
Seems nobody using it.

You need to fly with a unique flight number that no other people flying the A32NX use. Then you type in the free text by putting your friend’s flight number and hit send.

The other people flying with the flight number you sent, will receive the message. They can reply back by also typing the message and sending it to your flight number.

It doesn’t work if there are two people or more that uses the same flight number.

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Thanks for your reply.
If there are not my friends and they are people who are flying nearby and I just want to say hello to them?

Shall I pick their flight number or their nicknames?

Do I need to be connected in the same server with them?

Sorry about so many questions but I can’t find a guide tutorial about the feature.

The number is public. This means you’ll be able to send messages to anyone currently flying with that flight number. And anyone can also message you by sending the message to your flight number. You don’t have to be friends, it’s public. Anyone can message anyone currently online.

You don’t need to be in the same server as I’ve sent messages to someone connected to a different server region.

You can’t use their nicknames. It has to be the flight number that they’re flying and set up in their MCDU.

Don’t worry, I was like you when I found about this feature. But even without a tutorial or a guide, I just do experiments with it. Try different combinations, use nicknames, use numbers, have my friends to be online and fly and we test out sending and receiving messages. We try out same servers, different servers, change flight numbers, mirror the same flight numbers.

I usually learn these things myself by experimenting and try things out. And from there, I can came up with some knowledge and conclusions on how the feature work.

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Very helpful.
Unfortunately I don’t have friends who are flightsimmers and I couldn’t test with people who don’t have the feature activated.
I will try to contact with few others.
Have safe landings.
Many thanks.

Well I always fly with a flight number 4316 like my gamertag number. So feel free to send me a message to that number… But I would have to be online and flying.

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I will keep it in my mind. Thanks

do we use the flight number specified in MCDU or the one used as ATC callsign in the flightplan setup? Also do I enter the airline identifier or just the number?

The flight number used in the flightplan setup can automatically flow through the MCDU. But if you change the flight number in the MCDU, the ATC will refer to use the one in the MCDU.

No need to enter the airline identifier. Just the number. Because ATC will speak the whole text that you enter in that field.

so for example, if you enter the callsign as “Speedbird”, and the flight number as “BAW 4316”. The ATC will call you as “Speedbird Bravo-Alpha-Whisky 4316” Which you don’t want. so just enter the flight number without the identifier to make your callsign “Speedbird” and flight number as “4316” and the ATC will call you “Speedbird 4316”.

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Thanks for this…Ive been flying the FBW A320 and when entering in the MCDU FFL6788…I would get from Center Frontier Foxtrot Foxtrot Lima 6788 which was annoying so now Ive been placing just the flight number in that spot. Now if I don’t place anything in the MS ATC windows before the a flight…and only place FFL6788…will the sim then now that FFL means Frontier and call out the Callsign and flight number correctly?

No… The sim doesn’t work that way. It will still say “Foxtrot-Foxtrot-Lima 6788” even if leave the MS ATC windows blank. It could even say “Airbus Foxtrot-Foxtrot-Lima 6788” because of the fallback mechanism regarding the callsign to go up the order when there’s a missing field.

That means, if you want to leave the MS ATC field blank, you need to make sure that your livery that you use has been setup with the ATC-Airline field filled. So when you leave the MS ATC field blank, it will look into the livery level. If the ATC-Airline field is set to “Frontier” then the ATC will use that and call you “Frontier 6788” as long as you keep the flight number set as just the number without the FFL code prefix. If the ATC-Airline field is empty as well, it will go up one more level at the aircraft level, not the livery anymore. And if I remember correctly, the FBW A32NX have the default callsign as “Airbus” so the ATC will use that.

What I have found after downloading and using a lot of liveries that I downloaded, the majority of them have incorrect/blank ATC-Airline field. So I had to manually edit them one by one to the “correct” callsign on the livery level. That way I don’t have to bother with changing anything before each flight and I always have the correct callsign all the time.

Eventually, this problem got so big, that I end up stopping installing the liveries outright. I have my own template that I use for my livery structure, I just download and use their Livery Texture File, but into my own mod template, all I need is to populate the ATC-Airline, ICAO code, etc in my own standardised aircraft.cfg file, and all my liveries are structured properly with correct callsigns, etc.