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Flight Planning

Overview

Flying an airliner is usually done using IFR (Instrument Flight Rules). This means that you will be flying with an IFR flight plan. The IFR flight plan is typically created before the flight, and is then loaded into the aircraft's flight management system (FMS).

Flying IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) even in a simulation like Microsoft Flight Simulator always requires some level of flight planning.

In addition to the obvious route planning, there are several other aspects which are critical to any good flight plan:

  • Route Planning
  • Origin and Destination
  • Runways, SID, and STAR
  • Compliance with ATC Requirements
  • Routing and Constraints
  • Fuel Calculation
  • Weather Forecast
  • Wind Profiles
  • Cost and Time Optimization

See Flight Planning on Wikipedia for more information.

Microsoft Flight Simulator tries to offer a simple way to do route planning (World Map before starting a flight) however this falls short, especially for users wanting a more realistic experience for airliner flying.

There are various ways to load a flight plan into the aircraft. In real life, pilots typically use an external data link to load flight plans made for the flight by their company. Or they use the MCDU to enter a flight plan manually from their flight briefing documents.

As in real-world aircraft, it is common in flight simulation aircraft to integrate these systems directly with the aircraft's flight management system to be able to import all the relevant planning data. This includes the route, altitudes, constraints, fuel, payload (passengers, cargo), and other data points.

See MCDU F-PLN page for more information on the aircraft's flight planning in the Multipurpose Control and Display Unit (MCDU).

Loading a flight plan in the A32NX

In the A32NX for Microsoft Flight Simulator, we have these options to load a flight plan:

MSFS Flight Planning Tools

See Flight Planning with MSFS for more information on the different methods to load a flight plan into the A32NX and how to use it in combination with MSFS flight planning tools.