Do any of you guys know your expected flight time before takeoff after plotting your flight plan? I don’t usually add the speed and altitude set on the plan. I’m not sure if that’s the reason why the flight time isn’t shown.
To estimate it, I add 10-15 minutes for taxi, then I use my mach speed in cruise (usually 0.78 since I fly the 737-800) and divide my distance by it (distance divided by velocity), and an extra 20-30 minutes for descent/landing.
In your, FPL, it doesn’t show any ETEs until you are moving. For example, when you are parked, your speed is 0, so it cannot calculate any time since it would be XXXnm/0IAS, which is undefined.
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Smart guy!
For me it’s very easy: with A359 the average cruise speed is +/- 500kts
5’000nm = 10 hours
2’500nm = 5 hours
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Taxiing, takeoff, approach, winds must be calculated separately if needed.
I check flightaware for an exact completed flight time that I just planned. It gives you a flight time. Planned and actual. That should give you a general idea.
I have a high-accuracy way to calculate flight times (assuming you aren’t using AP+)
This method takes winds and temperature into account, so it will always be quite accurate.
Copy your flight plan from infinitex, and then paste it into SkyVector by clicking the flight plan button and pasting into the space.
Input your departure airport, arrival airport, and departure time into the blanks. For Spd and Alt, enter your cruising speed in Mach (or TAS if you prefer - NOT IAS), and your altitude as your flight level. Just for a quick note - the weather Infinite Flight uses in-game is like so;
FL280-320 in game is FL300 from weather forecasts
FL330-360 in game is FL340 from weather forecasts
FL370-410 in game is FL390 from weather forecasts
Above FL410 in game is FL450 from weather forecasts
So if your initial cruising altitude is FL360, you would enter FL340 as your altitude in SkyVector, as the in-game weather you experience is the real-world weather from FL340. If your initial altitude was to be FL370, you would enter your altitude into SkyVector as FL390.
Finally, when you plan to step-climb through to a new weather level (i.e. you jump or descent from one of the big weather levels I mentioned to another), you append something to the waypoint you plan to do that at, for example in the following flight plan my initial altitude is FL360 in game, so I enter FL340 as my initial altitude so I get the correct winds from SkyVector. I want to climb to FL380 at waypoint NETTY as shown in the image, so after that waypoint I append /M085F390 (M085 meaning my cruising speed is M0.85, and F390 meaning my flight level is FL390, which I use to get accurate winds), so in my flight plan it shows as NETTY/M085F390.
Finally, your ETE will pop up there, and you can add around 5 minutes to 10 minutes to get your real ETE. If there is a departure or arrival procedure that will lengthen your flight distance, it will most likely not be included in the SkyVector ETE, so you should add around 10 minutes to your flight time, but if you have pretty short arrival and departure procedures, adding around 5 minutes should suffice.
This method gets me to ±2mins accuracy on every flight I do!
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I tend to find that once I have generated a flight plan from Simbrief it gives me a somewhat reliable and realistic flight time.
However this then hinges on actually following the altitude and cruise speed profile Simbrief gives.
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Just one thing, using mach is OK, but to use TAS, one needs to know the cruise OAT.
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use windy.com to find temperatures at different flight levels. The flight levels in windy correspond to the weather levels used in Infinite Flight, so you can calculate TAS that way.
That said, I never need to do that as I almost always do medium to long haul flights where I will be well over FL280, and so I just use mach speeds. Just thought I should mention the ability to use TAS in case one is doing a short haul, or a segment of the cruise at a low altitude.
In windy, you can read the wind and OAT for any altitude, and according to various weather models. See below:
But what I meant was to correct a slight mistake in the way you mentionned Mach and TAS as equivalent data. Mach is equivalent to IAS.
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I completely understand what you mean. I get that IAS and Mach are basically equivalent at the same altitude, and that TAS varies depending on OAT, and I am not trying to say that Mach and TAS are equivalent, but rather that in real life flight planning TAS and Mach are often both used in flight plans.
Also, my bad for the way I phrased my original reply because I can see why it looks like I said Mach and TAS are equivalent.
When I mentioned that to denote a speed and altitude at a certain waypoint, you would write something like this: NETTY/M085F390, oftentimes in flight plans (which you can find on flightaware) it has it noted like this: RIGMI/N0496F360, where N0496 means the TAS is 496kts at that wpt.
I’ll show you a flight plan so you can see this in action;
The reason I mentioned that using TAS is a possibility because they use it in irl flight planning.
Edit:
The part where you can see the temperature and wind at any flight level is just data that has been extrapolated from a few different flight levels where they forecast and collect data from - Infinite Flight in-game weather is only from the flight levels where data is forecast and collected from, so only the data from FL300 would be present in game at FL310 for example. Not sure if I have explained this well, but I hope you get the rough idea
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I understand you 100%!
Of course, TAS is what defines flight time, hence fuel required and your method is very sound.
I am not sure though, that OAT does not change in a finer way in IF. I’ll check next time. I fly mostly between FL280 and FL310 with the TBM and I monitor the outside temperature while climbing to not overtorque the engine. I notice that the progression of temperatures in IF is perhaps not as smooth (regular) as it should, but I believe it is mostly in line with the windy thing at all level, including a tendency for the positive ISA deviation in summer to grow for some time in climb:
SL ISA + 12
12000FT ISA + 14
15000FT ISA +15
20000FT ISA + 14
28000FT (CRUISE) ISA + 10.5
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Easy! Simbrief sums winds up nicely with an AVG figure! Better heavy than sorry 
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Yeah, but SimBrief calculates the winds for the whole route with different winds at different locations.
But when I start a long haul with strong tailwinds (let’s say 60kt tailwind) and then I go into AP+ , all the winds calculated for later fall off the edge. And winds and directions also change while on a 10h long haul. So, no matter what, I am actually always pretty close to my 500nm per hour (kt) and never ever had not enough fuel.
I always end up 30 minutes prior to arrival with around 6000kg - 8000kg fuel left in my tanks which gives me a little over an hour flight on cruise level and speed.
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Understood, I was thinking when flying without ap+!
The rare times I used it, I noticed it let me “sleep-fly” with a decent virtual tail wind, which helps things remaining on the safe side.
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