There are many different ways to set up a flight plan for any specific flight. How do you like to set up your flight plan? Personally, I like using simbrief or onlineflightplanner.
Otherwise, often times I like setting up my waypoints to follow runway heading until I leave the airport airspace, and then add a few additional waypoints (if needed) to gently navigate the aircraft into the general direction of the final destination. Then, the next waypoint is near the airspace of the final destination, and I choose the appropriate subsequent waypoints to guide my plane to an active runway, and intercept the ILS. Of course if there is ATC this flight plan becomes void.
So how do you guys like to set up your flight plan? What do you think is the best way to do it (if any)? Let me know what you think.
I used to make custom flight plans with random waypoints leading me from one airport to the other. Now, I use FlightAware and SimBrief together to create my flight plans.
I go to SimBrief and start a new briefing. I put the departure airport and arrival airport and paste the flight plan down. I also fill out the remaining information required.
Interesting topic. If we get the right discussion going, we will see how different - with different goals - people use IF.
General
I donât fly real world routes, so real-world flight plans I donât bother with. My flight plan always includes the destination and departure airport. This may sound obvious, but youâll be blown away by how many pilots end their flight plan on a fix near an airport somewhere.
Departure flight plan
If the fixes are available, I will always make a complete straight out departure, right to the end of the cone. My next waypoint is placed so that I donât have to make a sharp turn to anywhere, with the risk in clashing in my parallel takeoff.
Arrival flight plan
Near my arrival airport, I include a fix 100 NM out and another one 50 NM out. These are two important waypoints in the flight plan. Itâs where I will be descending. If I want I can use the flight assistant app to automatically start my descent, so that when I reach 50 NM out I will be at 16-18,000 feet. By the time I get there, I check the airportâs ATIS, determine the runway, and add some fixes to my fligtplan that bring me near the runway. I do this in such a way, that I will be coming in via a downwind leg.
When thereâs enough fixes available, I set my fixes all the way into the ILS cone.
On-route flight plan
After I create my departure flightplan and I have set the fix 100 NM out of my departure airport, I get a straight line between these points. I then scan the route of this straight line, and when I see a few airports along this route, I include them into my flight plan.
So there you go. How to setup a happy real-non-world flight plan :-)
Well whenever I do a flight, I look at the actual flight plan and how it looks like. After I know the Basic idea, I just start planning by adding waypoints one by one in the direction my destination is.
I always do it like this:
Origin airport code + SID fixes + airway/en-route fixes to destination + STAR fixes + destination airport code. I think this is how it is supposed to be anyway.
Simbrief has AIRAC 1803 as itâs default navigraph.com database while flightaware uses the files flightplan on the desired flight.
To decode the flight plans generated from above to fit to Infinite Flight, @Chris_S has a nice webpage to do that fpltoif.com.
The flight plans may be complete in simbrief or need more tweaking in the case of flightaware for SIDs and STARs. Simbrief gives you an option to modify your FPL to fit realistic flights or for the most efficient routes(winds aloft considered as well as closed airspaces)
I very much agree with the straight out departure (right to the cone) to avoid traffic, that idea has really been growing on me. I also think if weâre at an airport with dual runways, it would be good to use the runway that faces our destination so we donât veer into traffic that is landing/departing on the other runway. I have definitely seen people with incomplete flight plans with liveflight! haha.
Itâs interesting how you set up a partical waypoint to initiate descent, itâs a great way to get the signal to begin descent rather than focusing on the instruments⌠every once in a while I miss out on the time to
descend so I end up adding 5-10 minutes to my flight.
Any way to know how far a waypoint is from an airport? Just googling? Lol
In real life pilots start their descent anywhere between 200 and 100 NM out; depending on many factors of course. So the accuracy of where you but the âdescent waypointâ can be low.
The second arrival waypoint at 60 - 40 NM is more critical as you are entering Approachâs airspace and I want to be at approx 18,000 feet there.
And for those who didnât know
Approach controller for the destination airport should be contacted from approx 50 NM at approx 18,000 feet.
I just roughly estimate the distance to the airport. You can see the distance.in the flight plan, and if you got the distance all wrong, you itâs not too late to change it.
I usually do two types of things in IF. Touch and goes, which doesnât quite need a flight plan and is also my favorite part, I use touch and goes as a mean of practice, this happens in the casual server. The second thing is long haul flight, where most of the cruise part happens when I go to sleep. I treat the take off and landing part pretty seriously, and as professional as possible.
