On Final, yet high in the sky.

[budreiser]

Aircraft in use...B787-10. Maybe not for everyone, but for me, MSFS 2020 ATC is egregious at bringing me in a position to capture the GS. I don't remember this problem in earlier MS Flight Sims. For the past few months, I have been either requesting a decrease in altitude early enough from ATC or coming downstairs on my own...without ATC permission. This morning I thought I'd give ATC another chance to get it right. At 21k and well upwind on the downwind, ATC lets me down to 11k. My next ATC descent permission (from 11k) is on the downwind 19 km from KBOS 22L. Now that's a challenge in that big bird. Never captured the GS but did manage to dive down, land midway down the field and exit runway. I guess until Asobo (or whomever) does a fix, as Mr. Sinatra says...I'll do it "MY WAY".

[budreiser]

Correction...

 

My next ATC descent permission (from 11k) is on the downwind 19 km from KBOS 22L.     

 

Should have been...My next ATC descent permission (from 11k) is on the upwind 19 km from KBOS 22L.

[kingnorris]

I have a similar issue with the Flybywire A320. I'll be at 33,000 ft and ATC tells me to descend and maintain 2,000 just 25 or so NM from final. Unless I break the speed threshold and hit the "expedite" button, there's no way to do that.

 

I saw a YouTube video on how to calculate the begin descent distance, but it doesn't always work out so well.

 

Now, I do like you do, and just request descent altitudes on my own.

 

 

[PhrogPhlyer]

This can actually occur in real flying. I was flying a C-12 (military version of KingAir) from Okinawa to Iwakuni Japan. At FL210 (21000 ft), directly over our destination, we again asked the Center for a decent. He immediately responded that we were cleared direct to the airfield. Pulling the power to idle and nosing over, we maintained 270kts in the decent and tightly circled the field. At around 6000' we contacted Iwakuni tower who cleared is to land from our present position and to maintain speed. Adjusting the circuit slightly we were able to land and never touched power during the decent. One heck of a roller-coaster ride., 

[DaddyTim]

Budreiser,

Like you, my "go-to" airplane is the 787 and I have also commented on this continued ATC anomaly. Until such time as it gets corrected, when I am about 150 KMs out, I request a sizable decrease in cruising altitude. It usually works, but not always and I end up bursting my passenger's eardrums with a nose dive.

Thankfully, nobody is rating my flights!!!

 

Tim

[tiger1962]

In case anyone isn't aware, it is possible to create a complete flight plan using the World Map which includes SIDs and STARs with Transitions.

Here's an IFR (high altitude airways) flight plan from EGCC Manchester UK, to LFPG Paris France; note that in the From and To drop-down menus I've selected an instrument Departure, an Arrival and an Approach:

 

 

Here's a close-up of the Departure I selected from quite a lengthy list:

 

 

And this is the Arrival and Approach:

 

 

 

 

[budreiser]

Thanks to all replies. To Tim, I do exactly that, and, as much as possible, try to select an ILS rwy for arrival, if available. Also, when available, I'll select SIDS & STARS that make the most sense and not ones which add huge doglegs to your flightpath.

[jrdale210]

@tiger1962 YEs I do that but always in combination with LNMP  as I can bring up the destination aerodrome and check the winds on the ground and do any mods to the flightplan then export it back to msfs and between the two I usually get an interesting flightplan. But I still mostly end up requesting serious altitude decreases to get down to final flightpath capture. Oh well keeps us from just sipping coffee or beer (whoops I did not say that word) while we fly. 

[dnpaul]

I almost NEVER had this problem until the last sim update.  This makes the game unusable to me.  I will not fly without ATC, that kills immersion.  They definitely broke something here, because it now waits FAR too long before starting descent.  Damn thing has me 10,000 feet too high on final.  This was not a problem for me until the last sim update.  It was so much fun.  Now it sucks and I have all these great planes that I can't fly anymore because of this crap.

[mrzippy]

@dnpaul  Have you given any thought, at least until they fix this problem, to request your own descent to an appropriate altitude maybe starting at 125 miles out?  I use to do that all of the time back in the FSX days.  ATC was always way to high on final.

[dnpaul]

7 minutes ago, mrzippy said:

@dnpaul  Have you given any thought, at least until they fix this problem, to request your own descent to an appropriate altitude maybe starting at 125 miles out?  I use to do that all of the time back in the FSX days.  ATC was always way to high on final.

Doing that ruins the realism that is the most important part of my flying.  It is probably the only workaround unless they fix it (what's weird is that I am not finding any other threads about this on any other forums, which makes it seem unlikely to be fixed).  I have 5 or 10 flights that I do all the time, and all of them are now unflyable with ATC because of this.  This is not something I am doing wrong or differently from before.  They definitely broke this.

 

Also, I never had this problem with FSX/P3D.  ATC  almost always got this right for my flights. 

[PhrogPhlyer]

In real aviation this is part of what generated the FAA's "fly a controller" program. Many ATC controllers are nit pilots and really benefitted from seeing tings from the pilots view. And when pilots could visit ATC, it was also quite enlightening, flying is a lot easier than controlling.

[terrylawdinn]

It's a well-known problem and there are multiple threads about it on the official MSFS forum, including work-arounds which I have found often work out okay for me.

The whole ATC thing is currently being looked at with the excellent Working Title team being involved I understand. But it's not just a quickfix, the sim developers know the whole ATC thing needs a total revamp and it's not a simple adjustment of lines of code.

MS/Asobo haven't "broken" it, it was poor right at the start and attempts to fix it have been largely unsuccessful. Patience, my friend!