Finding Real World Routes for Your Flight Planning

#1

Good Morning, Good Afternoon, or Good Evening wherever you may be. This was a little something that I think a majority of you will like/appreciate with the anticipation of Global coming up. Because we like to keep things realistic to a certain degree (at least try to), how do you plan on finding a route between two airports for a given flight? Most will answer, I just look up the flight number for the flight on either FlightAware or FR24, and it’ll just show the route. This, I agree is the fastest way. But who is in any rush? Below I have compiled a few screenshots that I took to show you a more in-depth way of finding a route for a given flight. All pictures are that of the FlightAware website and one from SkyVector.

Begin Here When you first open up FlightAware.com, you will be prompted with their home screen, which will look something like what I have included here. When you click on “Live Flight Tracking”, look for IFR Route Analyzer. This is where you will be able to look up routes commonly filed between two airports.
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When you click on the “IFR Route Analyzer” this screen will should pop up. The Origin and Destination Airports will be empty but I filled in an example for you guys to see for the sake of this post. Keep in mind, this may not work for all airports. Some smaller airports such as Class D airports that are less frequently traveled to may not have filed routes. Once you have your two airports click, “Find Routes”.
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After you have decided which airports you plan to file a route for, you will get a list of real world flight plans that were filed for the given route. This will include the frequency that the route was used, the altitude, and the distance for that given plan.
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When you click on the route, with all of the waypoints, you will be brought to SkyVector, showing the route and all of the filed points in-between.
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Hope this helps and gives everyone a little something to play around with.

Video Tutorial

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Introduction to SimBrief
Route Suggestion in Global
Introduction to SimBrief
#3

Another excellent contribution. Thank you very much for taking the time to compile all of this and present it so professionally. I’ll be using skyvector myself.

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#4

So many people don’t know how to properly file or even find a real world flight plan. This is great, and I actually use Flight Aware to file plans as well. (Just on the mobile version) Thank you for this @DeerCrusher.

#5

Skyvector is awesome. I use it all the time

#6

Thanks for this I really appreciate it, its most likely I will make up my own route, stopping off at as many airports as I wish or perhaps flying direct to my destination

#7

Bookmarked! And I like how you used KDFW as an example 😉

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#8

Thanks for this, I was checking FlightAware last week but missed the IFR roure analyzer section.

#9

A lot of people don’t know that it exists.

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#10

Simbrief :) and I also check windy.tv to see if my route is in favor of the winds.

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#11

Very useful! I will be using this all the time when flying on global eventually.

#12

This will help a lot of us thanks for sharing !

#13

Excellent guide @DeerCrusher - kudos! Many will find this useful, especially those who are wanting to fly more realistically once global is released. I hope to see many pilots use this method of flight planning as it definitely adds a more realistic aspect to the experience.

I personally like to use SimBrief, though, for all of my flight planning. It provides lots of more necessary information needed for the flight.

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#14

I mean, if I want to fly from Chicago to New York JFK, I’m pretty sure I don’t need to look it up to make sure that AA operates an A320 on that route.

#15

Nope, you don’t need to look that up. Where did you see that? 🤔

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#16

What do you mean? I don’t understand the question.

#17

I guess I’m not understanding what you meant by this. I understand it’s not really on topic but I don’t quite follow.

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#18

I mean, I don’t think it is necessary to check the callsign, waypoints, frequencies etc. Just get some departure charts or something, connect to an airway, and get arrival charts.

#19

Great post Deer! This is one example of truly meaningful contributions.

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#20

Thanks. There is a phrase that I try to live by, “Lead By Example”. I hope others will understand what is needed to make a meaningful contribution. I will say that I am not the best at making topics in clarity, and uniformity, but it’s not rocket science.

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#21

Indeed. Sometimes you find nothing but noise here.

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