Any way to change the estimated snack service time after TO?

[noel]

I had finally made peace w/ this penalty by being mindful to prohibit service when too close to ToD, and also being mindful lower the climb rate when approaching the altitude set for when service can start.  The problem is, in the PMDG 777 for a flight from KLAS to KDEN it's saying snack service should start 4 minutes after TO.  Now I have the flight level set to 21K feet for when service can start.  So I can lower that of course, but it seems like starting service 4m after TO is just way too early!  Is there a place I can change that, or I am forced to lower the flight level so that it can indeed start at 4 minutes into a flight, but then as I say I've been lowering the climb rate to 1200ft/m so the service carts don't get away from the attendants!

[Travis]

Hi Noel,

What's your airline's "Minutes for Auto Start" setting?  4 minutes after OFF is well too soon.

Also, an FCDU log or two with this happening would be welcome for me to analyze things.
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Starting in 1.8.3, you'll be able to change your flight's Cruise Altitude to avoid the "TOD Service Rush".  That's helped me when I fly STARs with an "early descent point."

Best,

[noel]

Ok great I will have a look ito the Auto Start setting. Is that what determines when snack service is expected? Thanks Travis!

Any news about a better SDK/Lvars for MSFS and FSCaptain?

[Travis]

Noel,

Auto Start is part of a fairly complex set of calculations to determine when Service should start.  It's a good place to start, but you may want to plan a similar set of flights so you can tweak the number to get the results you want.  FWIW, I have my Auto Start set to 10, and I usually wind up starting Service manually before TOC.

We start by calculating the AverageSnackTime for a flight.  There's an extra delay on the first Service to allow for everything in the galley to be set to "flight position".  After meals, there's a longer delay to allow the crew to pack all of the dishes for cleaning afterwards.  If it's late at night (local time) the wait for Service will be a bit longer.  Etc.
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Any news about a better SDK/Lvars for MSFS and FSCaptain?

I have heard rumors that such are being worked on, but there's nothing concrete I know of now.

But for some good news, an even greater hurdle was bypassed about a month ago.  FSCaptain / SceneryScanner are dependent on the Dowson's MakeRunways, which was updated to support MSFS in October / November.

Now, Dutch is making more MSFS flights for FSCaptain, and we're currently working to have the Administrator be able to read all flyable aircraft.

That's not going as smoothly as we had hoped....  We will get there, but there are major changes in how MSFS aircraft data is able to be read.  Some MSFS aircraft publishers choose to use DRM to hide certain values we need, so we are experimenting with ways to work around those gaps, and feeling that we will need to push some data collection efforts off onto Captains of those aircraft.

We'll say more about that at a later date....

[noel]

Thanks for the update Travis.

What I'm seeing again after looking at auto start and changing it to 10 is this in this flight plan from KDEN>KSFO. Any ideas where to look? Is it because it's a meal flight and shorter perhaps, so it thinks I need to start quickly in order to get snack and meal in by TOD? I think I did have 4 minutes in that field before, and the estimate was at 4 min. But when we changed to 10 minutes, it went to EST of 3 mins!

REMARKS:
- CREW BOARDING SHOULD OCCUR FROM 16:15L TO 16:45L.
- PAX BOARDING MAY NOT BEGIN BEFORE 16:40L.
- PAX FLIGHT WITH MEAL SERVICE.
- AVERAGE SNACK SERVICE EST AT 3.0 MINUTES. <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<< it went from EST AT 4.0 to 3.0!
- NOTE TRANSITIONS: KDEN=18000 (TA), KSFO=FL180 (TL), KOAK=FL180 (TL).
- ARRIVAL WINDOW 24 MINS EARLY TO 8 MINS LATE.
- COMPANY POLICY REQUIRES TOC WITHIN 30 MINS AFTER TAKEOFF.
- FOR THIS FLIGHT, COMPANY POLICY REQUIRES LANDING LIGHTS REMAIN ON
WHILE BENEATH 10000FT, AND LANDING LIGHTS OFF WHILE ABOVE.

[noel]

OMG, with the last change it's gone now to 2 minutes for AVE SNACK SERVICE EST! What exactly is looked at by the RELEASE to come up with that estimate?

I will send you the FCDU log and hopefully you can see something. Thanks in advance! Back to MSFS until I can fly P3D again w/o killing my score!

[Travis]

Noel,

The "Average Snack Service" is not related to the "Auto Start" value whatsoever.  "Average Snack Service" is simply a division of PAX vs FAs.  If you have 100 PAX and 2 FA, the Average would be twice as much than if you had 100 PAX and 4 FA.  Etc.

I'd need to see your Dispatch Releases for the flights that are in question.

Best,

[Travis]

It just dawned on me that the message in the Dispatch Release may be ambiguous.

Its intent is to let you know the length of an Average Snack Service, so you can plan how many Drink / Meal / Snack services your cabin crew can manage for your flight.  Meals are usually 50% longer than Drinks / Snacks.

I'll tinker with the wording for the 1.8.3 release....

Best,

[noel]

Ok that makes sense now thanks. The reason I'm having troubles with this are two-fold:

1. I'm loading the PMDG 777 up w/ just 40 people! So the AST is....2 minutes! This is for some testing, but I used FSC be it testing or not!
2. I'm getting dinged for something like 'bad timing of the cabin service'.

So I guess my question should be: does starting the cabin service AFTER the listed AST contribute to the poor cabin service timing penalty? If not, I can't tell again what's wrong as I'm making sure no cabin service happens unless the climb/descent rate is <=1200/fpm, and making sure I don't start service when it can't be completed to TOD. I think you once hinted sometimes you just have whiney PAX, so could that be it? I'd like to disable the penalty if possible!

Thanks!

[Travis]

Noel,

Please send a few FCDU logs from these flights so I can get a better look at what's happening.

It seems that with 40 PAX and a lot of FA's that the Average Length of Snack Service should be 5 minutes or less.  You will always fly with a full complement of FAs, no matter the amount of PAX.  If you are deliberately flying less PAX than normal, consider reducing your FA headcount.

For example... this year I fly CRJ7s with a maximum of 24 usable seats (they're all Business Class, so that helps the bottom line) but with one FA.  So I get service times like so:

* Load Summary
J PAX/J     24 4080LB  
G CARGO     21 3720LB  


REMARKS:
- FLIGHT CONDUCTED UNDER CODESHARING AGREEMENT AS 'DAL5274'.
- CREW BOARDING SHOULD OCCUR FROM 02:30Z TO 03:15Z.
- PAX BOARDING MAY NOT BEGIN BEFORE 03:00Z.
- PAX FLIGHT WITH MEAL SERVICE. 1 ATTENDANT ASSIGNED.
- AVERAGE SNACK SERVICE LENGTH EST AT 10.0 MINUTES.
I usually begin my initial Service somewhere around TOC if it hasn't started automatically, and I let the cabin crew handle things from there on out until I'm getting close to TOD. The FAs will initiate another service around 25-30 minutes after the last Snack, or 55-60 minutes after a Meal - unless it's late at night and the PAX would be sleeping.

So looking at the Dispatch Release above, I know that the Drinks service should last around 10 minutes, then somewhere around 30 minutes later the cabin crew will start the Meal service which should last around 15 minutes.  If I realize that TOD will be just over 60 minutes at that point, I'll manually call for a Snack service about 20 minutes before TOD.

You also need to allow for expected turbulence mid-flight, because a long stretch of Medium turbulence will prevent any service.  That's one reason we've added the ability to change the Cruise Altitude mid-flight.

So I guess my question should be: does starting the cabin service AFTER the listed AST contribute to the poor cabin service timing penalty?

The Average Length of Service has no effect on when Services should start.

Best,

[noel]

Awesome thanks for that I will reduce the FA count that should held and bonus it fits perfectly as the other 5 FA's are all in isolation due to Covid exposure so now there is only one left to serve in the 777! It that doesn't cut it I guess I should send some logs yes?

[Travis]

That's a great plan Noel!

If you limit your 'test flghts' to a few liveries, you could make Overrides and Load Maps for those liveries with the reduced PAX / FAs.

That's what I've done with my CRJ7s, so if I ever want to fly a full load of American Holiday Revelers ( ) I can pick a different livery.  All of my FA's are fully equipped with plastic-fork-proof NASA Grade suits and oxygen generator backpacks.

Happy Holidays,