Use the FS flight plan for ETE & fuel calculations

[Dutch Owen]

Right now, dispatch calculates your ETE (and therefore your fuel burn) on a straight-line distance between departure and destination, and if you are flying significantly different from the straight-line you as PIC are responsible for altering your ETE to reflect that difference.

The idea is for dispatch to know about your flight plan and calculate distance, ETE, and fuel burned based on each leg. This would result in more precise estimates.

Problems: The flight would have to be planned and the plan loaded at the point where the flight is selected. This ideally should be done offline before you enter the airplane anyway.

Another problem is support for all the flight planners out there. I'm not sure any is possible -- the requirement would need to be that however you come up with the flight plan it's got to be in FS format (the kind that's loaded into the GPS and viewed on the kneeboard) before FSCaptain could process it.

This idea is closely related to the possible enhancement to do flight selection and planning in the Administrator before you enter the cockpit.

[jet1]

Dec 8, 2009 12:23:01 GMT -5 Dutch Owen said:

Right
Another problem is support for all the flight planners out there. I'm not sure any is possible -- the requirement would need to be that however you come up with the flight plan it's got to be in FS format (the kind that's loaded into the GPS and viewed on the kneeboard) before FSCaptain could process it.

That will not be a problem as the the vast majority of external flight planners are able to export a flight plan into FS2004/FSX format. The major ones that come to mind are FSBuild, FSCommander, FS Nav and vRoute.

Also, FS format is the norm input for many other addons that need flight plan information. That goes for the Active Sky family, maybe REX? (weather) and PFE and Radar Contact (ATC).

[borisvp]

Agreed. And those who dare to fly with the internal ATC (I confess ) have to generate and load an FS format flightplan anyway. This again can be fed to a weather tool and used for calculation.

And now we have a real self serve dispatch:
1. Go to the office and get your assignment
2. Plan the route (with whatever tool you use)
3. Go to weather briefing and get your enroute weather
4. Provide the route and weather data to dispatch (distance to fly and average wind) and receive your load (maybe even a load sheet?) and your fuel calculation
5. Go to your plane, wake it up, activate the assignment and have FSCaptain (via FCOM) load and fuel the plane

Infinite Possibilities

Cheers
Boris

[jet1]

How Boris described it is pretty much the way it works in reality so I can easily second that.

What would be nice to add to the mix is the so called last minute changes where some extra passengers or cargo come up after the initial load figures. Those would come up randomly and you'd have the choice to reject or approve it.