MSFS | Take Your FLIGHT PLANNING To The Next Level | IFR | Xbox and PC

hey everybody welcome to my follow-up video on flight planning in microsoft flight simulator and today i'm going to show you how to plan a real-world ifr flight warm welcome to the slim hangar my name's mark thanks for watching and let's get started the information in this video applies equally to xbox and pc users i have assumed that you've got a basic understanding of flight planning and how to do it within microsoft flight simulator if that's not the case then check out this video link in the notes below in real world aviation flight planning is a complex and expensive subject but today i'm going to do my best to keep it simple and straightforward so from time to time i may make some generalizations certain rules and regulations do vary depending on where in the world you are this tutorial is designed as the initial building blocks on which you can build your more advanced ifr and vfr flight planning during the video i'll make reference to various third parties and resources if you have access to a pc then it's straightforward if you don't then i recommend via your xbox series s or x you use microsoft edge or your preferred search engine some browsers don't always display the information correctly where appropriate links to all the third-party sites in the notes below the video to kick off with let's have a look at some of the basic rules we'll be complying with during our flight planning depending on the direction that you're flying aircraft fly at different altitudes this is a safety measure to ensure aircraft separation as indicated above so if we're flying between zero and 179 degrees we would be at odd levels such as flight level 7000 feet 13 000 feet or 23 000 feet conversely flying 182 359 degrees we'd be flying at even levels that may be six thousand feet twenty six thousand feet or thirty six thousand feet and so on that's why good flight planning dictates we should avoid a zigzag type of flight plan involving significant changes in direction and flight level changes it just creates more opportunity for error if you're flying vfr we adopt the same principle in terms of odd and even flight levels the only difference is for vfr we add 500 feet so if i was flying ifr eastbound i could fly at 9000 feet if it's vfr i'd have to choose a flight level of 7500 feet or 9500. we take a look at skyvector.com we'll see there's different maps for different types of flights vfr planning is not restricted by predefined routes as we effectively fly place to place using visual references as a guide to stay on track this is a vfr map and sky vector is used by real world pilots turning now to the ifr maps there are two there's the world's low-level routes and the world high-level routes this is a low level and this is high level the difference is not determined by the type of aircraft you fly but the altitude as a general guide low altitude airways are used at 19500 ft and below anything above that it's high altitude airways and these airways are effectively roads in the sky looking at the map we can see there's a number of different symbols l179 has no arrows which means flight along that route in either direction whereas n872 and n873 are one-way traffic only they travel only in the direction of the arrows this would be helpful if you are manually planning your own flight route in some parts of the world mainly the states you will find different types of maps we have the standard vfr low altitude and high altitude but they also have a number of n route maps and these are provided for additional information and more detail these sectional maps can also be used for flying through defined airspaces an essential part of flight planning is knowing which runway to use for both landing and takeoff this is especially important if there's no atc looking at this airport we see that the wind is 340 degrees at 4 knots note the way that wind is reported it's blowing from 340 degrees pilots always want to take off into the wind as this will provide maximum lift in this example it's not difficult to determine that the departure runway is 33. if on the other hand we had the wind change direction to 240 degrees at six this would necessitate a change of runway the closest to it would be runway two two twenty two good pilots always try and reduce as much as possible the amount of crosswind on takeoff for our flight planning activities we need to head to the world map and if you're following along i'm in the default airbus a320 neo the first step is to make sure we've got the information we need on the world map so we open up the filters option now most of the options are not going to have a big impact on what we plan and i've stuck with the satellite view but what is important under navigation i've got airspaces off navaid's on and most importantly fix and rnav position on and that's important because we're going to be planning an ifr flight unlike vfr ifr flights will use various navigational and gps fixes and positions to chart the route once that's set we can start setting up our flight plan flight planning is determining how we get from a to b and if you're interested in that being something that's representative of planning in the real world then there's a couple of aspects within the flight planning that we need to be aware of let's take a quick look in terms of the route itself as we've already seen we need to ensure we follow the respective airways at an appropriate altitude that conforms to the regulations and we do all this to maintain aircraft safety but that's not just restricted to the route at most of the bigger or busier airports they have a number of predefined routes for departing the airport and proceeding to your first fixed point on your route and there'll be different departure routes for different runways we call these sids or standard instrument departures the small airports may not have acid or standard instrument departure and in that case typically you will find something like fly runway heading to 2000 feet and so on today our chosen airport does have a standard instrument departure and for the busier or larger airports unsurprisingly there's also an arrival procedure a standard terminal arrival or star that will define how we approach the airport and once again often governed by set altitudes stars will often start from a number of predefined points which we need to bear in mind when planning our route to ensure our route takes us to one of those points the star will define a path to the airport and bring us to a point where we can engage ils for our final controlled approach so in summary we've got our route we have a sid on departure and a star on arrival and then ils it sounds more complicated than it is and microsoft flight simulator can help us here let's jump back into sim let's start planning our route and we do that by first of all picking our departure point and i've picked gatwick echo golf kilo kilo in the uk and note here it has given us a automatic runway assignment runway 26l or 26 left you could of course just start at a gate cold and dark but for expediency for this tutorial i'll start on the runway and now you can do your own check to make sure the runway is the right one note on the label on the world map echo golf kilo kilo it's showing wind 220 degrees at 5 knots if unsure you can click on the label and zoom to details i'm aware that gatwick only has one operational runway so in this case i know 26 left is the correct runway so i'm happy with that now let's select our arrival airport i'm going to find my airport by typing in the icao code echo delta delta sierra stuttgart in germany it's assigned us to runway 7 and wind is 130 degrees at 2 knots click on the label and the runway information comes up on the right hand side it's a single runway so runway 7 is correct 70 degrees is closer to 130 degrees the wind direction than 250 degrees now at this point a couple of things to note as soon as we entered our departure information a new line has appeared with the tab nav log and our beginning and ending points as well as an options menu below the aircraft icon and it has defaulted to direct gps in other words a direct route from gatrick to stuttgart but if we click on it we see a number of other options appear and it's here where microsoft flight simulator can help us considerably with our flight planning other than direct gps we can choose vor and note along the nav log bar all the various different vor stations are shown but today we're more interested in ifr flying and we have two options low and high altitude airways and once again our navigational points have changed in addition to various vors we're also using multiple nav fixes to plot our route from gatwick to stuttgart we've now changed to high altitude airways which is more realistic for something like the a320 and once again the root details have changed you will also note as soon as we change to ifr a number of new options are now available for gatwick we've got our departures which is our sid standard instrument departures and for stuttgart our arrivals our star and approach ils and these options will allow us to complete our flight planning at this point of course you can manually make changes to the flight plan as needed and as shown in my earlier video flight planning getting started if we go across to the departures box and click on that it will display all the standard instrument departure routes that are available for that particular airport for all the runways catrick does have two runways but only one i believe is active the main question now is which one do we choose we know we're departing runway 26l so only those departures with 26l can be selected and even so there are multiple options available the reason there are multiple sids is they're designed to give you an expedient and safe route away from the airport but depending whether you're heading north south east or west so you have multiple different sids from the same runway within microsoft flight simulator if you click on a sid and it's not practical nothing will happen it will not insert the said at this point you have a number of options you can just click through the various standard instrument departures until you find one that works for you and for your route here i've chosen the minfo one mic departure and that seems to work fairly well and line up with my route fairly nicely but it will accept some departures that are not necessarily that practical i've chosen the lam 6m departure it's accepted it but again you can see where it's taking me not very practical and not real world i'm going to change back to my previous departures that seem more practical but it's at this point in the flight planning where you're going to need to refer to third party information to help you determine the best standard instrument departure microsoft flight simulator currently will not help you choose your departure or arrival let's go ahead and complete our flight planning then we'll have a look at various options for finding out the information you need we're now planning our arrival into stuttgart my last waypoint fix before the airport is lambgo if you're lucky then the star will have the same name and we know it's runway seven so let's have a look at the standard terminal arrivals that are available to us i'm paging down looking for lambgo but no luck so once again it's a matter of trial and error or finding the information elsewhere and then putting it into the sim i happen to know the approach into stuttgart is the batso2 alpha runway07 i've now got my approach my last fixed point before the airport is lima bravo uniform it's a vor and i now have two options i can either go for an ils approach or i can leave the flight plan as it is and go for vectors for visual approach runway zero seven in this case i'm going to choose an ils approach and normally this would be the correct thing to do in something like the airbus 320. my approach option is currently set to automatic i'm going to change that to ils07 and to my flight plan now from lima bravo uniform it has provided fix or gps positions to align me straight up with the runway which would allow me to engage ils in my final approach again just to highlight the importance of getting the correct star i've now changed the star and we can see the crazy approach that it's given us and the more difficult approach for the ils runway zero seven so we've been able to do most of our flight planning in microsoft flight simulator but we're not quite finished yet we may want to check the waypoints along the way and any altitudes as well as fix our cruising altitude for the flight for that we go to navlog and here we can set our cruise altitude from what we've learnt already we know it has to be an odd number but for a short route like this 39 000 feet is too high in my opinion we can see from the line graph on the top there's almost no cruise and we'd be burning fuel unnecessarily so i'm going to change that to something i feel is a little bit more realistic 29 000 feet seems more practical hit enter and it adjusts accordingly we can now run our mouse over the points on the graph or just scroll up and down on the nav log itself just to check that we're happy with all the various entries and we could also take note of various altitudes at various waypoints once we're happy with the flight plan well we can go ahead and save we do this by choosing the load stroke save option and then save you can give it any name you want i just use the icao codes so it's eg kkk edds and a320 and i save it as a dot pln file so i can use it with any aircraft and we've completed our first ifr flight plan having a flight plan done before you start your flight automatically loads that flight plan into your aircraft we can see it displayed there on the secondary display panel this applies to most default and some third-party aircraft we can also get further information by going to the nav log whilst i acknowledge the information here on the nav log is limited it's still useful just would be nice to have altitude information as well now for some of you this may be as far as you want to take the flight planning and if so that's okay but for those that want more accuracy and detail well we need to look at third-party applications let's do that now sim brief is a tool that runs in your browser and it's free it's owned by navigraph company well known for its charts so you do need to register but it's very powerful let's go to dispatch and create a new flight plan now there's a huge amount of detail that can be added but let's just look at the basics it's simple and straightforward enter your departure and arrival airports egk and edds there's an option for an alternative i'm going to change that to eddf which is frankfurt and i can now choose from a drop-down list my aircraft type doesn't have the a320 neo but the a320-200 is close enough choosing the aircraft ensures that weight and fuel calculations are done correctly it uses live meta information so the departure and arrival runway are correct you can let it auto assign altitude or you can change it yourself we did our flight plan for 29 000 so i'm going to put in 29 000. you have the option to add passenger weights and cargo weights and so on i'm not going to bother with that now i'm going to keep it simple and here you can see it's automatically calculated a route which is pretty close to the one we created in microsoft flight simulator if available it will also show you other valid routes between gatwick and stuttgart i'm going to stick with the top one as that's the one that's closest to what we plan before continuing this further assistance available in the highlighted bar a number of reference sites one is sky vector let's go and have a look at that and here we can see it's put our route into sky vector and also detailed the flight plan let's go on and give one more a test and i've chosen flightaware for those that want absolute accuracy there's no schedule flights between gatwick and stuttgart unfortunately but i can go back to the home page i'm gonna put in egl heathrow and stuttgart let's see if there's any real world schedule flights and there they are so if you want to you can even use real world call signs airlines and dispatch times and so on but that's too much detail for now let's go and generate a flight and this now will confirm and generate the full flight plan it's a quick process and only takes a few seconds and here is our full flight plan with all sorts of useful information you can zoom in on the map and here you can see the alternative to frankfurt's also been plotted if we page down a little bit further in terms of the flight plan we can see detailed fuel information can be in pounds or kgs and you can enter this into the sim just before your departure and you'll have a real world fuel load on board our flight route is shown in full detail but one of the other fantastic strengths of a package such as this is we can now save the flight plan and we can do so in multiple formats the one we're interested in today is fs click download save it where you want to and you can load that directly into microsoft flight simulator your flight planning is done and 99 times out of 100 it will have chosen the correct star and said designed for those that fly online vatsim is a great resource once again you do have to register and you should only do so if you intend to fly online but under resources they have access to worldwide airport charts as well as documentation and other training information this is stuttgart for example and in addition to the airport layout we can get sid and star information let's have a look at this star and this shows us all the available stars available for stuttgart and you remember we chose the bezo 2 alpha a great resource for pilots another great resource is ivao or the international virtual aviation organization again designed for those pilots flying online and as per vatsim they have a wide range of different resources available including training charts and so on worth a look should be noted and as far as i'm aware for xbox users you can't currently fly online with vatsim and ivao hopefully that compatibility will be coming sometime in the future another free source of information is open nav they have a fairly wide coverage of most airports including sids and stars and so on just to note in my experience quite a few of the charts are somewhat out of date but nonetheless a useful resource for those that want accuracy and the most up-to-date information then a very popular choice is navigraft charts but unlike the ones that we've looked at so far this is paywear on a monthly or annual subscription further details in terms of pricing can be found on their site links in the notes below a monthly subscription to nevergrass allows you to access to that information on the computer on your mobile device such as your tablet be it apple or android based it's the one that i currently use and the big benefit for me is because i fly a lot in vr access to the charts etc is available in sim in a panel so i'm on every graph on my computer on my desktop i've selected gatwick and i can now have access to any information that i require including charts for any standard instrument departure or arrival i've now switched tab to the taxi and i can look at the parking positions if i want to or i can select the airport and get an overview of the taxiways and so on now back in sim and flying i can access the navigraft information through the top toolbar i click on that it opens up and not only does it show my route but where i am on that route very nice feature all the various fixes on my route are shown above and i can click on any one of those to bring up details let's have a quick look at the ils approach for stuttgart before we get there i'm going to click on the baxo arrival the chart automatically changes i can now have a look at the published procedure for baxo 2 alpha arrival and once i get there again i'll be able to monitor and see my point along the route and it works great in vr as well for the sirius airline simmer this is a must-have planning vfr or ifr is one thing but flying it is another available on xbox and pc and from fs academy the company that has brought the inbuilt training tutorials for microsoft flight simulator check out my initial review videos on vfr ifr and their a320 jetliner and brought to you by an airliner captain i'm also aware they're on sale at the moment to the 20th of december so worth a look and once again links to my review videos in the notes below well i hope that the information in this tutorial has given you enough information to get you up and away be you an airline pilot twin engine prop or a cessna 152 you can now plan your route and if you want to make it real world as well again i need to highlight before closing off that some of the regulations in different parts of the world does vary so it's best that you check what local regulations apply don't forget to subscribe if you want more news information and tutorials on microsoft flight simulator and if you found it useful give it a thumbs up it does help the channel thank you very much for joining me today i'll see you soon stay safe and bye for now you

Channel: SimHanger Flight Simulation

Views: 25,061

Keywords: msfs tutorial, msfs flight planning, vfr flight planning msfs, ifr flight planning msfs, microsoft flight simulator, flight planning, flight simulator 2020, simhanger, ifr flight planning, microsoft flight simulator 2020, planning your flight msfs, msfs ifr, msfs vfr, msfs planning airbus a320, msfs simbrief, msfs navigraph charts, msfs navigraph toolbar, fsacademy, fsacademy ifr, fsacademy vfr, msfs flightaware, msfs skyvector, msfs vatsim, msfs ivao, msfs opennav

Id: zEx8mRkhwhs

Length: 24min 12sec (1452 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 16 2021