Using the FS2000 Flight Planner

For new pilots who perhaps have not had much experience with airliners or airlines, I am below going to take you through a flight stage by stage so that you may learn a few basic things. Hopefully this will get you forward to a more advanced stage. Our main flight school items will help you gain more experience. Today you are going to accompany me from booking on duty for a flight from Gatwick to Malaga in Spain.

First thing we need to do is set up the flight for departure. We are going to use the Microsoft Flight Planner to build a route plan.  Most of the flight will be done  using the GPS system . The take off will be using the radio instruments to navigate onto the GPS route. Today our flight is going to be from Runway 26 Left at Gatwick. Our route will take us first to Southampton VOR radio beacon then  to a waypoint called ORTAC the border between British and French Air Traffic Control areas . This is in the middle of the English Channel . To get the Flightplanner up we have to use the the menu bars in FS2000 use the top left menu called Flights then go down the bar to Flightplanner. First of all we have to enter into the flight planner Gatwick and Malaga Airports  Airports. The airport codes Gatwick is EGKK  and Malaga is LEMG we enter the runways by pushing select and put Runway 26L in Gatwick runway box, and  and Runway 32 into the Malaga box .  See photo below.

                                  

We have selected Gibraltar as a diversion airport in case the weather is too bad or the airport closes due to an emergency incident. Click on the flight plan IFR and GPS buttons  as shown above then press the Find route Button

This has taken us to the photo below

                                                                    Enter Cruising Level of 35000ft Into the box. 

We now have the red line showing you the direct route between the two airports. All the dots on the map are radio beacons, airports or waypoints. To turn these on and off the buttons are on the top. We now have to edit the other waypoints of the route into the flight planner.  What you do is drag the red line onto the waypoint with the mouse using the buttons when it has connected let go and the waypoint will be listed on the left. Repeat this until your route is complete if you want to scroll the map put your mouse at the top bottom sides or corners in the direction you want to go and click the left hand mouse button . It is suggested you zoom in to do this so you can see you are putting it on the correct waypoint . Also if you are not sure double click on the waypoint with the mouse and a box will open with the details on. This is where charts can be useful as it gives you all of beacon identities. The photo below shows the route after being set.

If you now push the Nav Log button it will give you all the frequencies of the beacon on route. If you have downloaded the patch from Microsoft you can now print out the route. All you need to do now is save the plan. Now push load the aircraft will then have the Global Positioning system loaded for the flight. Unfortunately it puts the aircraft on the runway and not at the gate so you will have to reposition your aircraft by taxi or slew mode. Press the tick button to confirm the load of the flight plan .

Alternative method.

1. Load the flight plan.

2. Slew to terminal

3. Adjust aircraft, position as well as instruments and flight control surfaces

4. open "Flights" from the toolbar and "Save Flight"

5. Enter a descriptive name for the flight route and short synopsis.

6. Save flight.

7. Enjoy this plan over and over again with the aircraft parked at the gate with plan loaded.

You could use this plan for other destinations that follow the same route then use the direct to command at the turn off point. This will save you some disc space.

We are now ready to prepare the aircraft for flight which is the next lesson. 

Remember to Save the flight plan by pushing the save button give it a name you will remember I use Malaga2 as outbound and Malaga1 inbound but you can use the name given
 

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