The Simbrief saved airframe (developed by IniBuilds) states the service ceiling of the A310 is FL410.
Whenever I would set up a flight via Simbrief, I keep the flight level on AUTO and I’ve had a few FL400 plans set up. Once loaded into the FMC and I enter my weights, I get an error of “FL above ceiling height” or something like that. I then go into INIT and bring it down to FL370 or 380 and the error goes away.
What’s the deal here? In the MS description it does say the aircraft has a ceiling of 39500 I believe, so is this what I should be changing the ceiling to in the airframe description? Why would IniBuilds state it as FL410?
Hope this makes sense!
Obviously something it not jiving…
Payload (aka weight) will have a massive influence on your ceiling.
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At a guess i would say it is possible to achieve Fl410 if light/empty weight will limit your ceiling many airlines will fly lower for the first part of their journey and ascend later as they become lighter. it is possible the FMS knows once your weights are entered that the ceiling is to high for the weight of the aircraft.
I havent flown the A310 so i cant know for certain.
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OK, that makes sense to me. If I’ve got a lot of weight on board, I’m not going to be able to make FL410 at TOC.
Now let’s go back to Simbrief. Since I have weights and everything on auto, shouldn’t the logic of the planner pick up that I’m too heavy to make FL400 for example, if the planner is giving all these values? Sounds like a Simbrief logic issue???
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Something does seem off if Simbrief is leading you astray on FL.
Which profile are you using the “root” level A310 or the sub-profile for IniBuilds?
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Often times, I see Simbrief have step-climbs in the route, especially for the larger, heavier airliners. If you look at the detailed flight plan, does it have step climbs up to the final altitude?
Step climbs are not yet something MSFS supports in any planes that I’m aware of.
Dan
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The IniBuilds custom profile. Maybe I should try the included/root profile…
While it is true the sim doesn’t if using in game ATC (though that’s another can of worms) its possible to set for a lower alt then request higher alts as you progress but yeah its not right if you want to do things properly
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The root/default A310 profile is what I use and I’ve had good results with it selecting a proper cruise altitude.
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Step climbs are written into the plan for sure. If I choose anything other than AUTO, the plan will give a warning that step climbs are removed.
Here comes the next question. How do I implement that into the flight?
OK. I’ll start using it. I figured the custom IniBuilds profile would be the way to go!
All I’ve ever done with around the 100 hours I’ve had in the A310 was to go for the gold and hit the top of the flight plan without stepping up.
If the Simbrief flightplan has step guidance, shouldn’t that be captured into the profile of the flight in the FMC?
Now we’re getting into it… Lol!
Yes, absolutely…but being the silly pilot that I am, I blindly trust that Simbrief is going to spit out a proper plan until I start setting up the FMC 
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This is kind of what I mean when I say it’s not really supported yet. Maybe PMDG 737 supports it in their custom FMC and VNAV will follow it?
But I’m pretty sure the FMC in the A310 doesn’t.
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I use the custom A310 inibuilds model and simbrief gives me step climbs with that if needed.
I’ve never used the direct import, I always enter the flightplan by hand into the FMC, you can enter altitude restrictions similarly to the A320 but it’s a bit time consuming. I usually don’t and instead I manually control the cruise level. In the world map I enter the initial cruise level for ATC and then just request increases as necessary.
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Ahhh. Ok. I gave up on ATC a long time ago. Thanks.