What is the Best All Round Flight Planner for FSX?

[forshaw]

Hi;

 

I need your help/advice in purchasing a good Flight Planner for my needs. I have the following Payware Aircrafts.

 

1. Quality Wings 757. Which I love and fly all the time since I can use the default FSX Flight planner. Easy, no SIDS and STARS to deal with and “out of date” Date Bases.

2. PMDG (B737 NG & B474) which I seldom fly, since I can't use the default FSX Flight planner. It's a shame since they are both fantastic aircrafts to fly.

3. I am also looking to purchase the iFLY 747 V2 that just came out.

 

I like setting up the FMC, Pre Take Off, Cruise and Landing settings. I just don't like entering Sids and Stars which in my opinion is a waste of time, that's what Flight Ops are for.

 

I looked up FPPX and it seems to be an all-round planner and would support all of the aircrafts I have and the new iFLY. I don't mind the price; it might be an over kill for what I want to do but it seems more complete than the others. I may be wrong, that’s why I am reaching out.

 

It also seems to support exporting flight plans to the MS FSX format. The reason I think that would be great is I would also like to continue using FSX ATC for departure clearance and landing. So if my flight plan is tied to FSX I can use it for that.

 

Please let me know your thoughts and comments, especially from individuals who have used FPPX or any other products that would support what I am looking for.

 

Thanks very much.

 

Kindest Regards.

F.

[HillBillyJim]

I very much enjoy this site, http://www.simbrief.com.

 

You create a free account and use a really great planner. Put in everything you can think of. Plane type, people and cargo weights, destination and departure arrival airports...and the site plans everything, down to your departure and arrival runways.

Now, keep in mind the free account uses data about a year old. If you have navigraph account, which I reccomend, and buy the latest data (it's cheap and worth it for the payware planes) and sim brief will use that. You can even download the routes and put them into the FMC that way. It's all around great.

[tjrush]

I suggest FS Commander. http://www.fscommander.com/

 

There is a free trial. The trial is limited in that it will shutdown after 30 minutes and you cannot save flightplans. It can be restarted for another 30 minutes as often as you like.

[evm]

If you like to dive into the world of an airline dispatcher you will enjoy PFPX. The 1 or 2 million optional settings make it possible to do your planning extremely detailed, down to individual aircraft equipment. Don't forget to add Topcat to use for fuel planning. And be aware of the online subscription needed for the weather.

 

If you just want to plan the route itself, FS Commander is your thing. Bit of a clunky interface, but a lot of functions centered on route planning. And every export format needed for any major sim or addon is included as well.

[tvieno]

+1 to FS Commander. That and manually plotting the points on Skyvector.

[dnpaul]

I like Simbrief also. It does everything I need it to do, and exports into anything I need it to, including FSX planner, which is awesome. I updated it with my navigraph membership, and made a donation to the site as well.

 

Really top shelf software, imo.

[forshaw]

Hi Folks;

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide your valuable input and advice I really appreciate. So I think my choice is going to be between FS Commander and SimBrief they both seen to do the job and simple enough. PPFX might be an over kill for me given I only want to plan a simple route A-B.

 

BTW: I found this great link with a list of great products. http://fsxgetstarted.com/flight-planners-miscellaneous/

 

Thnaks again folks.

 

Best Regards.

F

[dnpaul]

Hi Folks;

 

Thanks so much for taking the time to provide your valuable input and advice I really appreciate. So I think my choice is going to be between FS Commander and SimBrief they both seen to do the job and simple enough. PPFX might be an over kill for me given I only want to plan a simple route A-B.

 

BTW: I found this great link with a list of great products. http://fsxgetstarted.com/flight-planners-miscellaneous/

 

Thnaks again folks.

 

Best Regards.

F

 

You mentioned that you don't like to fly the PMDG because you cant use the FSX planner. With Simbrief you can dial up a flightplan, then export it to both the PMDG flightplan folder and also to FSX .pln format. Then you can load it into both the FMC and load it as the FSX plan, and you will be able to fly with FSX ATC.

[forshaw]

You mentioned that you don't like to fly the PMDG because you cant use the FSX planner. With Simbrief you can dial up a flightplan, then export it to both the PMDG flightplan folder and also to FSX .pln format. Then you can load it into both the FMC and load it as the FSX plan, and you will be able to fly with FSX ATC.

 

That is fantastic, thanks. One of the responses did mention FSX planner but thanks for the confirmation. I am actually going to give it a try later in the week when I have some time. It would be great to start playing with that bird again for some real route flying.

 

Cheers.

F.

[MikeS369]

Another nod for FS Commander. It saves the following file types:

 

FSX

FS Commander

Radar Contact

SquakBox

IAVO

FSInn

XML

GoogleEarth

iFly

PMDG

LevelD

Project Magenta

QualityWings

Airbus X EXT (AXE)

X-Plane

[forshaw]

Wow, it does support quite an extensive list which is great. Makes it easy to expand my add-ons with major products and not have to worry about support.

 

Thanks for posting.

F.

[HillBillyJim]

No problem, I was really happy to stumble upon it.