In Career Mode, it’s currently impossible to plan missions with night arrivals. The reason for this is that the mission generation system is so basic, it doesn’t take into account whether an airport has night lighting on its runways (e.g. operable at night) or not. And we have no tools in the simulator to check this.
The EFB provides no information about airport runway facilities. Most mission destinations have no ILS so that’s not an indicator either (in very rare cases, when the destination has ILS, we can at least assume it has a lit runway as well). The size and material of the runway has no correlation whether it’s lit or not.
Now, one could say you can check this with Free Cam on the mission briefing screen, zooming in on the destination and check. There are 3 issues with this:
The UI is so incredibly slow and stuttery that it takes literal minutes to check each mission one by one.
If the sun is still up at the destination airport, then it will be not lit in the Free Cam view. So if you start the mission and the sun sets by the time you arrive, it can lead to an unlit runway very easily.
Night lighting is actually NOT modeled on generic airports, at least not in the Free Cam view. There are NO actual lights along the runway — I deliberately checked an airport in Free Cam which I knew had night lighting, and there were no actual light facilities modeled at the edges of the runway. So even if you zoom in on an airport, it’s not possible to determine whether it has lighting or not.
Due to the above reasons, it’s simply not possible to plan missions with a night arrival. I just tried as the sun is setting over Europe, I manually checked 6 missions one by one, and none of the destinations had a lit runway, most were small airports anyway. I had to back out of Career Mode because I simply didn’t want to start any mission where I didn’t know if I could land.
This is yet another incredible oversight in the Career Mode and the mission generation system. It should be aware of the time of day and generate missions only to lit airports. This issue is exacerbated by the winter, when days are shorter and nights are ever longer. We simply can’t fly in daytime because it’s too short and we have a life. Yet night flying is impossible this way.
I installed Little Navmap but can’t find the lighting info for airports. Where is it located? I use the airport search feature to look for an airport and then at the bottom left corner there are many data points for runways, etc, but no lighting info. I looked for random airports as well as airports I know have lighting.
Thank you. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem reliable or up to date. It says to me that EGLL doesn’t have lights, for example… is this database only for US airports?
im a LNM user from fs98/fsx days, still use it today, great map
it reads right from the games database, so its correct for that if not for the real world
it does say it has a lighted runway
you just have to get to the correct tab,
I usually check the charts, either in-game or via navigraph/Little Navmap before planning a night flight.
Either the airport reference chart or approach charts would provide indicators you can look out for.
If there are no charts then its a dice roll, but leaning toward no infrastructure at all. (if you can’t even find the airport in these tools odds are the “airport” is probably closer to someone’s driveway)
Practically, if there are no charts there’s inherent risk because without a published approach there could be lights, but also a randomly generated tree, or some hill right before the runway you slam into.
PS if you aren’t sure how to completely read the charts (like me), run the chart through AI and ask about this aspect.
im not sure why your not seeing the same as I am, my version of Little NavMap has all this
maybe you dont have the Scenery database updated? or this isnt a current version of LNM ?
I guess the issue is that I don’t have MSFS installed on my computer as I fly on Xbox. Otherwise I have the same version of Little Navmap as you, but there is no indication about runway lights. It’s baffling though, why this specific information is missing when all others are there.
Out of curiosity I looked up several other Intl airports but “lighted” is never indicated for any runways. (For the sake of completion, these are what I looked up: EDDF, LHBP, KLAX, KJFK, LFBD)
Obviously, the real issue is with smaller airports to which missions want me to go. It’s never clear which have lights or not. The simulator itself should indicate this in the EFB at least.
I do not see that the runway tab next to airports is highlighted. Try clicking on that.
Otherwise, Pooley’s publishes an annual Flight Guide of all UK airports if it is those you are wanting. It has all the small and large airports in it and whether they are 24 hr or daylight use only.
ohhh, ok well that explains things (that is something you should probably specify up front)
first, i agree this data should be available in game or at least thru their web based planner (that i ‘think’ can share even with xbox, but dont hold me to that)
i checked and i dont see it on the shared web planner either
so if you where to make a wish list for this i would certainly vote for it, but its also good to learn another way around issues imo
this app (LNM) is made for PC and it would normally read the airport data right from the game folders and loads that exact data right down to the correct Parking Space numbers assigned by default and even addon airports (its an exact representation of whats installed in the game)
its really what i call a ‘moving map’ that connects to the game and follows your progress, it also gives real time ‘in game’ info like wind, speed, altitude, direction etc on pc
xbox does play anywhere, so if you can install the game … you only need it installed for long enough to have LNM scan the DB you could get it working for just a “static map” but it wont ‘connect’ to your xbox console so many of the features wont work (the game is streamed so its only around 12gb to install)
i was not even aware LNM had any default data, its my understanding you have to load that from somewhere
thats probably why its not complete
for xbox you may have to use some other flight planning app that supplies better data (or install the game for a minute), but they may not match the actual game as well as LNM
in the meantime maybe try the online planner above and/or …
Volanta, skyvector or some of the other many websites dedicated to flight planning
they might be easier to use
I don’t think wanting to have proper information for night flying is a special use case. This applies to everyone. My problem is not with Little Navmap, my problem is with the simulator, at least the Career Mode, which doesn’t provide adequate information about whether the player can fly to where the mission wants them to. The fact that we have to look for external sources in order to be able to play properly is a severe issue with the simulator in itself.
No, sorry, I mean with special use case that your MSFS is installed ión XBOX. In fact, Idon’t know how LNM creates its ccenery database without access to MSFS.
@dreampage Maybe the reason you’re not seeing it is because you’re using LNM with a very old AIRAC cycle. You can update this with Navigraph. Those that do see it are you using the latest?
Hovering the mouse over airports (or using F4 & entering the airport ident) shows the facilities data, for example Twentyninemile Palms, which happened to be along the route I flew last night:
So, providing you have updated to the Scenery Library in MSFS (I’m on v1.6.31.0), you should be able to determine which airports have lighted runways & which do not.
I just want to add my support to the topic. I started on a PS5 the career and most if not all of the crashes are related to impossible planning in advance about what to expect at destination at night. In theory no missions should be done at night to small airports with missing lights. I am used to fly missions in Southern Europe and most of the missions at night have destinations which are impossible to see. No atc, no lights, nothing…just country fields. I use on a separate iPad the official Flight Planner but I don’t see any indication about this characteristic to plan in advance. Beyond that I just want to add that Flight Planner does NOT have all the airports in game. Check for example LILO which exists in game but not in Flight Planner
