At many airports, some runways are only ever used in one direction, or only for take-offs or landings.
Example: Zurich (LSZH) Runway 14/32 is only used for landings on 14. It is NEVER used in the 32 direction. It does not even have taxiways at the north end. And yet about 75% of the time the in-game ATC tells me I have to take off from 32, which is immersion-breaking, Also at LSZH, Runway 10 is never used for landings (not sure if it is ever used for takeoffs - not that I’ve ever seen).
I’ve also been told to take off from runway 22 at Courchevel (LFLJ). Good ■■■■■ luck on that one.
Can something be done to lock out unrealistic runway assignments?
Or at the very least, allow us to ask ATC for a different runway.
I’ll second being able to request a different runway. So often, I’m assigned a runway that’s downwind or has a 25 knot crosswind when there’s a runway available that’s more directly into the wind. If they’re not going to fix the automatic runway assignment, then at least let us request an alternate.
For landings, yes, you can often request another approach, but it’s still not right. Let’s say you are told to land on runway 04 at Courchevel - Which is insane. You ask for runway 22, and the response is usually “Approach 22, then circle to land 04”. Not much help.
I’ve never seen an option to choose a different takeoff runway, except at uncontrolled airports.
It’s something of a real headscratcher - MSFS is so full of incredible technology and sophisticated programming, but the ATC is incredibly stupid and the ground vehicles are as well. There should be a command at pushback (or any other time) that says “Get clear” because you are ready to taxi. I’m always running over vehicles and people who just won’t get out of the way - it’s quite immersion-breaking.
ATC needs lots of work for sure. It’s all interlinked with traffic, weather and the airport operational restrictions that we don’t currently have at the moment.
For a change of landing runway, changing approach first helps prevent the ‘circle to land’ issue otherwise it’s using the wrong approach for the changed runway and a circle is often needed.
For take-off I do see the ability to change runways with ATC, this is at CYVR tonight?
I don’t recall seeing an option like that on a controlled airport. Obviously you found it, I wonder what the criterion is for it to be available.
I like to fly IFR as much as I can, but that’s another issue I have unless you load a flightplan on the loading screen, you are stuck flying VFR with no flight plan as far as ATC is concerned. I like to load at a gate/parking and load the FMS manually (or via simbrief like FBW), but there seems to be no way to file the plan from there.
It depends on the aircraft, the stock ones and things like the FBW A320 allow you to just set the FMS and then request clearance from that. Others that did their own navdata like the CRJ or PMDG 737 unfortunately need ‘both ends’ updated with the same plan. What I do is plan it all out in Simbrief and then export (using the automatic 'Simbrief downloader app, from the simbrief site) a local aircraft file (say, for the PMDG) plus the MSFS2020 .pln file - then I load that in the world map and then load up the FMS simbrief plan. That way all the ATC matches up. One other ‘funny’ in this is that by default you won’t start at a gate importing a .pln file, so once it’s loaded use the dropdown list on the World Map to pick a gate (there is a bug if you select a ‘dot’ on the map it alters the plan, just use the dropdown and it’ll keep it unchanged).
For the Change Runway, it’s a little odd in that Clearance will assign you what it feels is the active runway (according to just wind) but then you need to get to the ‘Request IFR Taxi’ step with the Ground controller. At that point you can request a better runway, although it doesn’t let you go against the wind (which is not good and might be what you want). Here’s an example where I request a different (and closer) runway:
They do still have a heap to do still on ATC for sure, but I think it’s going to take a while. Starting with the FSX base probably didn’t do them any favors on retrospect. Good ATC is one of those things that is a lot more complicated that it would seem at first.
