You pick a location to start and a parking spot, select an aircraft, load a flight plan, and click “start” and it starts me on the runway with engines running. I have to re-load everything.
Any way you can make it so once the parking spot is selected, it stays selected?
You load the flight plan first, then pick the parking/gate using the dropdown menu.
Because the flight plan already has a departure point and an arrival point but they don’t take into account the parking/gate that you start on. So once you loaded the flight plan. Pick the parking/gate to start and press Fly. And you should be cold and dark at the parking/gate with all your initial flight plan loaded.
Unfortunately, in my experience at least, when you pick the parking/gate to start after you have loaded a flight plan, the flight plan gets reset to a direct departure to destination flight, erasing any intermediate waypoints your saved flight plan may contain.
That flight plan reset only happens if you use the icons on the map to select the departing gate/parking. But if you use the drop down menu, it won’t change the loaded flight plan.
Besides, even if it switches back to Direct flight plan, you can just change it back to IFR High/Low Airways and the waypoint will be assigned again. Although, the waypoints might differ from what your original flight plan might be… But I guess it depends on how important it is for you to actually follow the exact same waypoints to your destination. For me, as long as I get from point A to point B through IFR waypoints, no matter what those waypoints are is not a big deal for me.
Which is why I don’t use external flight planning tool. To me it’s not that big of a difference.
I’m pretty sure it happens with the drop down menus too but will have to check tomorrow to confirm.
Re reapplying auto VFR or IFR legs, that doesn’t help when it is a custom flight plan, which I use quite often for some of the group flights here. If you fly any of Gunpilot’s group flights, there are often 15-30 custom waypoints that get blown away when I try to spawn on a parking spot instead of the default runway. As mentioned, I will try the drop down menu with a custom flight plan tomorrow and will report how it goes.
I’m very sure it doesn’t 
Yeah, I get all that, but I think if I pick a gate first or last, it should remain, regardless of where the flight plan begins. Just my two cents, and if it is a simple fix, it would be nice.
But what if the flight plan starts at a different airport? What if you previously selected a gate and then changed your mind and loaded a flight plan instead?
From a user experience point of view, it does not make sense to keep it. Loading a flight plan meaning discarding all previously set information. As it should.
After loading the flight plan, you can alter the departure location from the existing flight plan via the drop down boxes.
Yeah, like that happens all the time. 
I agree with OP that the selected spot should remain selected, provided the plan you load goes from the same airfield. In other words, if what you’re doing makes perfectly good sense. You’ve placed your aircraft somewhere in the world, and now you want to load a prepared flight plan.
But if you do attempt to load a flight plan going from a different airfield, the sim should prompt the user that this will clear their starting spot and provide sensible choices like “Continue” and “Cancel”.
I think I have found myself on the runway with engines running 5-10 times although I always want to start the plane up myself from a parking spot. Not exactly a mild annoyance when it happens, given the time it takes to find out that you’ve made a mistake and the extra time it takes to correct it. At first I couldn’t figure out why it happened, because I was sure I had picked a spot. There’s no need to put a new user in that position.
Of course, it’s even worse that you need to know the difference between pointing on the spot on the map and picking it from the combo-box.
I also agree with OP that this is not the most pressing issue.
It actually happens to me more times than I can count. I usually jump into MSFS without knowing where I want to start or where I want to go.
I pick one airport, then look at the current fuel and range on the map. Then I pick one city that I think would be good to fly to, then look at the flight time, and I thought, nah too long… Then look for another city to either depart from or fly into.
Then I end up with, nah too short I want to do something else. So I go ahead and pick another city again.
Sometimes when I want to fly somewhere I don’t have the liveries yet, or that when I pick and inbound or outbound flight I need to make sure I have the relevant liveries in my collection.
I’m so undecisive in my flight planning 90% of the time that using external flight planning tool for me is more of a hassle than an ease. Because since I change my mind very often, I don’t want to spend time building flight plans only for me to dislike it when I load it into the sim, and I had to go back to make a different plan elsewhere, save it, load it, then dislike it, then do all the process all over again.
I just might as well just use the built in world map point and click, select IFR flight plan, look at the duration, If I’m happy I select the SID and STAR, and off I go. Otherwise, I click another airport into another airport, and keep doing it without going in and out of the sim until I’m happy.
I fully agree with the fact that the world map is not the most user friendly solution 
It indeed can use quite a few improvements (of which you stated a few). Having said that, In my opinion the suggested logic by the OP wouldn’t be an improvement
Making a menu easier to use would not be an improvement. Ok, got it.
Well blow me down, setting the departure parking spot/gate from the drop down menu doesn’t nuke the loaded flight plan! I must have been doing it via the map, which is functionally equivalent and therefore should work, but obviously doesn’t.
Thanks for pointing this out Neo4316 and Pieter1982NL 
I know exactly what you’re getting at here. You almost want it in a auto-save or cache so if a crash or change occurs (gate change/destination change), you can default sort of that parking spot. Right?
My work logic flow is to type the identifier in the search box (usually its slow and janky). This highlights the airport, I zoom in, and graphically select my spot. Though I’m snobbish and just do point A-B on the flight planner. My actual flight planning I do myself with Simbrief and local knowledge.
But yes, it dumps the spot if I change. Perhaps Asobo can implement a option to retain last location. Some guys on here I see don’t care, but I do a little. And what they should improve on is the menu having saves with planes/locations/etc. Do we have that? Idk. I seem to do a lot of jotting down locations on paper when I end the day. In real life, changing a parking spot does’t dump a flight plan…changing a runway does (not all planes). Irregardless, it should stay mostly the same. Have a notice pop up staying what happened if it needs to dump based on runway change. Mind blowing innovation.
Listen guys, quit using that planner on there. Its garbage. Make it realistic and put in your own info once the game is loaded. If Asobo wants to make the planner if better still…a quick line text/type bar similar to JeppFD and Foreflight. Then I would prob use it. Use Simbrief or Navigraph to get better planning tools. Rant over lol
Yep. I guess it’s not a priority, but would be nice to see at some point in the future. Maybe it’s easy and they could fix it quickly, idk.