Save / Load a Flight (including Flight Plan) - MSFS Flight Planner (now EFB) functionality

Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Wishlist
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Please bring back the basic function of the Flight Planner; the functionality of saving, loading flights with or without a flight plan - at the world menu and after fly now - and if a flight plan is created, with the function to load this into the FMS (each time after loading a file).

TL;DR - the three main points in this longer thread:

  • Restore save / load function (both .flt and if a flight plan used with .pln) and also allowing the saving and loading after fly now.
  • Restore the flight plan (.pln) into the FMS after loading a saved file (.flt incl. .pln or only a .pln)
  • “Have a full save and load feature” (including parameters such as “nav info, AP, fuel, time, weather, weight, etc” - described here by @TristeCiel and @CG604 - refer to .flt.

Update May 18, 2025 - A lot of features that were previously in the Flight Planner have been recently introduced, as part of the EFB; so there is a lot of progress there - the main remaining request of this thread is the ability to save / restore flight situations as described below in more details. Thank you.

More information / Background:

Below in this thread is my summary of the current state; options that are now available with limitations and the open issues relating to save / load.

For reference here I have included what this features looks like in Microsoft Flight Simulator X below.

It was useful to have the Flight Planner window; which could be accessed at anytime during a flight - and the flight plan could be changed at anytime as well and ATC recognised the changes, the flight situation could be saved and loaded at anytime too.

In previous simulators, like FSX, it was also possible to directly go to menu - flights and use save and load with any aircraft and then resume with your last state; exactly as you were.

I believe the functionality is still around but it’s not working fully from the beginning of release, this has been a bit of a hit and miss - and the UI inconsistency is still around. There was a work around that has also stopped working.

The Flight Planner feature; or more specifically the function of save / load is an essential feature - there are plenty of tools that export flight plans to the sim via the .pln (Flight Plan) and this should be possible to load before and after fly now. If the World Menu is suppose to replace the Flight Planner fully; in a first step I ask the developers to restore the functionality of loading a .pln after fly now or a .flt (State/Situation/Scenario) with a .pln included.

The Flight Planner window in Microsoft Flight Simulator

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Reference of file formats from the P3D SDK - this was also linked from the issue thread mentioned above.

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Load / Save Flight Files

Prior to starting a flight it is possible to both load a .pln and .flt from the Windows Explorer dialog that opens when you press the load / save button or space key.

Once loaded into the flight, after pressing ESC you have the option to load the same dialog but now it is no longer possible to load .pln, only .flt, the UI still says both .flt and .pln and I think it should possible to load .pln files after loading, which was also possible in other versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator.

This seems like an obvious issue but I could not find any thread, is there one?
I think this is an essential part that should work, as .pln as part of flight planning.
I would very much like to see this fixed.

UI

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Only .flt inside flight

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I believe you can FORCE to load a .pln ( what is missing is the Template *.pln)

If you specify a file name *.pln, it will then display all the .pln files, and you can select the one you want.

But yes, it should be fixed to display the template options of *.flt and *.pln

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that is useful, just tried it! So since it works already, should be an easy fix then for the Asobo team to just enable .pln there. :thinking:

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should be .. but now ULTRA LOW priority, as there is such a simple work around.

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A simple work around that I’ve not come across until now
 maybe it could be added to the known issues please?

I think it’s little things like these; where priority could also be placed as well; it’s often the little things that make big differences to the user experience. This little thing is related to the bigger feature; flight planning, used by many simmers.

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Regressions should never be low priority. But apparently the French do things differently :smiley:

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The reality is, the whole Flight Planning system within MSFS needs an extreme re-design, that goes way past the loading & saving of flight plans.

The world map system is severely inadequate, as is any creation or changing of all but the most simple auto-generated flight plans.

User waypoints are a total mess, as is the inability to specify altitudes for specific legs of a route.

The good news (if you can call it that), is that this whole area is missing from the SDK, so hopefully it gets a re-design to bring it to a more usable “Flight Simulator” tool , rather than a Game Play feature, and gets fully documented in the SDK.

Unfortunately, quite a lot of work - which does not have the Glam & Glitter of new Scenery, or other surface Cosmetic improvements, that seem to be what the masses are happily feeding on, and pushing sales.

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Yes there is lots of potential there to improve the flight planning feature, would like to see this too, please do create a separate feedback thread or add to the existing ones, there are many threads with feature improvements and comments about flight planning.

My aim with this thread was only about the restoring/adding the ability of .pln files once loaded to the UI. Your work around works well in the mean time :+1: until the functionality what the UI is saying is there is added. Thank you

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Voted! I’ve reported this bug I think three times since it occured during launch in August 2020. Each time it has just been marked as resolved, but I haven’t seen it actually being solved.

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type in *.* to see all files in the Folder

But after loading a PLN File the AI Radio handling, ATC and ILS Approche get worse

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That is a nice tip too. What do you mean by the other related stuff getting worse? Are you saying it happens generally when loading .pln/.flt or just with .pln?

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Have the same issue.

When pressing escape from the game, you get the “Options Screen”

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Opening the Load/Save option

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We are unable to load flight plans as stated above (.pln) due to the option for (.pln) is not available in the dropdown box as indicated below

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FWIW, flight files (.flt) contain a pointer to the flight plan (.pln) but this pointer is wrong most of the time. There is a workaround. When Load/Save is selected, a Windows file selection box is displayed. It is “locked” to enter only a .flt file. To get around this restriction, put . in the filename box. This will now display both .flt and .pln files for selection. Or the flight plan name can be entered including the .pln at the end.

The entered flight plan should be close to the current flight plan. If a random flight plan is entered for airports on the other side of the country, navigation pointers get messed up.

I only use this technique whenever ATC goes goofy. I will cancel IFR and shortly after, ATC asks if I want to file an IFR flight plan even though I am currently flying VFR. I enter the name of my original IFR flight plan. This seems to reset ATC.

Regarding the .flt files, it appears that Asobo has designed these to be used or reused once and they are to be used before starting any other flight. I don’t think we are supposed to build our own library of various flights. Many of my older .flt files do not work after updates.

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I can’t get this ‘feature’ to work. I can reveal, and select a valid .pln file using the Esc/Load route. Clicking OK to load a new plan is accepted and it allows me to go back to the flight and
the Garmin hasn’t changed the plan at all. It’s still the same one as I had entered previously. I created two different plans from the same location. Loaded the first with the flight, and then tried to load the alt one once sitting in the aircraft. Sadly no dice. Would be much better if Asobo just implement the ‘load’ option as a menu item in the Garmin, as Xplane does.

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This issue is still present; now in the SU10 beta.

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Still in SU10 release and makes importing flightplans into the Kodiak a real PITA

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Continuing from Sim Update 11 Beta Release Notes [1.29.22.0]:

[quote, post:1, topic:548906"]
PLN files can now be loaded during a flight on PC
[/quote]

Running 1.29.22.0 (SU11 beta) after loading into a flight, there is no .PLN option from the Windows Explorer file selection dialog.

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I am so happy I found this! So this works well with the CJ4 to load a new flight plan after landing. My question now is if anyone know how to do it in the C208? Or the Garmin system. Tried force loading the flight plan, it did not go into the Garmin.

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This is closed as by design as we currently do not allow loading of PLN files during a flight due to sim issues. If players want to load something during a flight, they should only load an FLT. The feature will not be changed but the message in-game will be updated to reflect the correct behavior.

Please vote on this issue to express interest in adding this feature. Thanks!