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Professional Flight Planner X (PFPX)Publisher: AerosoftReview Author: Rohan NairSuggested Price: $54.99/images/fsc/wbicons/store-buy-now-button.pngIf you've been into flight simulationlong enough, then chances are that are that at some point of time,you've asked yourself: how can I plan my virtual flights in the mostrealistic manner possible? Many of us, myself included, planned ourflights in a rather rudimentary manner in our early days of flightsimulation. At that time, it didn't matter to me whether I wascarrying the right amount of fuel or not. It didn't matter if I was atthe right altitude or not. ETOPS? Didn't even know it existed backthen. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_1.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_2.jpgAs the years went by, I really started to feel that while I mightbe flying the airplane by the books, I wasn't doing the part before itby the books. There was an add-on called vRoute Premium which helpedto shake off this feeling. I rememberreviewingit nearly a decade ago. There was also Aerosoft's Flight OperationsCenter and Ernie Alston's FSBuild. For quite a while, that's all wehad. A few free online planners were there but needless to say, theywere limited in functionality and what they would let you tinkerwith. About six years ago, much to the delight of several eagerlywaiting flight simulation enthusiasts, FlightSimSoft releasedProfessional Flight Planner Xhereon referred to as PFPX. Published byAerosoft,the mission of PFPX is quite simple: to be the most realistic andfeature rich flight planner for virtual aviation and appease thetastes of a diverse user base. So does PFPX enable the casual flightsimulation user to get realistic routes and fuel plans thereby givinghim the moderately realistic experience he wants? Does it give thecompulsive pedantic power user the ability to govern every aspect offlight planning like the real world and enable him to account forevery drop of fuel estimated for his trans-Atlantic ETOPS flight thathas an in-flight re-dispatch waypoint? Read this review to findout. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_3.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_4.jpgAs you might've expected, PFPX is a tool that runs independently ofyour flight simulator. Naturally, if your computer can run a flightsimulator, then you can run PFPX unless you are still using somethingolder than FS2002 on a pre-XP era system. I'd like to add, based on myexperience, that a 1 Mbps internet connection, at the least, is neededto enjoy all that this product can offer without frustration lest youare a really patient person when it comes to download speeds. Over the years, PFPX has been actively worked on by itsdevelopers. As the product evolved and eventually matured, majordevelopmental activities went into a lull with no new hotfix orrelease for many months. Not too long before the curtains were drawnin on 2018, version 2 was released and at the time of writing this,the latest version is 2.03. For about $55, you'll receive adownloadable version of PFPX and for no extra charge, a year'ssubscription to the PFPX servers. Let me get it out there right nowthat PFPX is fully usable as a flight planner without the serversubscription. The server subscription gives a few extra features suchas detailed weather, oceanic track messages and NOTAMs. We'll look atthose features in detail later in this review. Installation is likely to be uneventful and hey ho, 9000 real worldroutes for you out of the box! You'll be greeted with a user interfacethat reminds you of the 2010 version of Microsoft Office products. Itmay daunt some at first but as with many complex things in life, youdon't have to pay attention to all of it at once. The user interfacecan be customized to suit your likes be it the theme, what buttons andcontrols are visible, the size and layout of the frames and thelike. To get a run down of what's what, what does what and somehelpful general knowledge about flight planning, head on over to thestart menu to read the product manual. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_5.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_6.jpgThe user interface is functional and in my opinion, welldone. There are three distinct portions in the PFPX window. The topquarter spans across the width of the window and here's where all thevarious buttons and controls are to carry out a multitude ofactions. The remaining three-quarter of the screen is split intoframes whose size can be adjusted. The left one is where you'll seealmost all of the text info that PFPX can tell you. And it's alsowhere you'll be making the most important data inputs during theplanning flow. The right side one is the most interesting frame in thewindow. It's a map view and it'll do more than just show yourroute. Airports, navigational aids, airspace boundaries, airways,oceanic tracks, FIRs, UIRs, adequate airport circles, terrain,restricted airspace, AIRMET/SIGMET areas, wind barbs, jetstream andturbulence are also what the map can show you. Mousing over anyvisible element in the map will bring up a pop-up containing detailedinformation about that element be it an airport, airspace boundary,oceanic track, an airway or so. Weather data, NOTAMs and trackmessages are readily accessible from here. If you need to quickly jotsomething down, then there's a scratchpad for that too. Most of the program options and a few other features are tinkeredwith via separate pop-up windows. The UI is well tailored and willalways remind you of what is the next action item during the planningflow. The UI is also highly customizable via the program'ssettings. The software will offer a good user experience from a userinterface perspective. However, holistically, the application can puta smile on your face only if its core features perform well too. Readon to find out if they do. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_7.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_8.jpgNow before we deep dive into the details of what PFPX has to offer,let me brief you about that server subscription and external softwarethat PFPX can interface with. Your initial purchase of PFPX comes witha year's subscription free of cost. Subsequently, it's 12 Euros a yearto use the features that a subscription offers. Those features areaccess to the PFPX servers that will get up-to-date real time wind andweather data, METARs, Terminal Area Forecasts (TAFs), NOTAMs, andup-to-date oceanic track related data and messages (NATS - NorthAtlantic Track System, PACOTS - Pacific Organized Track System andAUSOTS - Australian Organized Track System). After reading thisreview, you'll be able to decide if you really need a serversubscription or not. In case you don't want a subscription, you still need weather andMETAR data, at the least, to make the most out of PFPX. Which is whyPFPX can be configured to use weather data downloaded by popularweather engines such asActive Skyand FS Global Real Weather. Are you a TOPCAT user? Well then you'll be happy to know that PFPXcan interface with TOPCAT too. You can assign a 'TOPCAT module' to theaircraft that you will plan your virtual flights with and once you'redone planning, a click of a button will send all required input datafor performance calculations to the TOPCAT window. Or, you can leavethat be and let PFPX take care of this in the background and insertthe results directly into your dispatch papers. I don't own TOPCAT butI did some research and it seems this tool hasn't been worked on forquite a while now and certain forum posts suggest that it won't beactively worked on anymore. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_9.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_10.jpgAnd now let's look at everything else in PFPX. Right from the timewe started going to school, our lives have been governed byschedules. Flight operations in the real world are heavily time boundwhich mandates the need for flight schedules. Being a flight planningtool, PFPX allows you to do just that with the schedule editor. Youcan schedule virtual flights by providing a minimum amount of planningdata. Then, when the time comes, pick out one of them, plan it and flyit! The tool allows for repetitive flights to be scheduled at desiredintervals and wow, you can even cancel a scheduled flight to annoyvirtual passengers. What's really neat is that if you fly for avirtual airline that supports scheduling via PFPX, then you can log inand download their flight schedule to PFPX. Maybe you're excited about scheduling and flying virtual flightslike a real airline pilot. Regardless, you'll need performance datafor the aircraft that you intend to fly. Out of the box, PFPX offers'profiles' for a plethora of popular airliners such the 737 series,the A320 family, the venerable 757/767 , the 777, the 747, the E-Jets,and so many more. Also included are templates built using theseprofiles that have been tailored to the particulars of popular add-onsfrom developers like PMDG, iFly and Aerosoft. Using these profiles andtemplates, you can maintain your own database of aircraft for yourvirtual flights. Each aircraft can be customized to uniquely identify it based onairline, seating configuration and more. There's so much that can becustomized pertaining to, but not limited to, weights, fuel, payload,diversion constraints, ETOPS scenarios and on board equipmentspecification. Take a look at the screen shots to see what I mean. Ican have a 737 with two separate configurations because through theday, I haul passengers and through the night, freight by having allthe seats removed. Airlines in the real world do this and this is whydifferent configurations for the same aircraft are allowed in PFPX. Asan aircraft ages, it becomes less efficient and let's face it,aircraft of the same type in the real world age differently dependingon where they're flying and how much they're flying. To account forthe implications of this, flight dispatchers in the real world can adda 'bias' for performance parameters, collected using in-flight datarecordings, so that planning accuracy is always spot on. PFPXsimulates this too! /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_11.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_12.jpgYou might've noticed through the screen shots that a number ofeditable fields for performance parameters for aircraft profiles areleft empty. Worry not as most of the important editable parameters arepre-populated. It's difficult to get all of this data for thesimulation world and I observed that it doesn't impact accuracy orreliability of PFPX all that much. Most of the default profiles andtemplates have their numbers more or less spot on and the averageflight simulation user will find them to be perfect out of the box. Incase you are a die hard realism seeking pedantic, you have the powerto edit them. Also, if you're missing some aircraft profile or if youcan't get to grips with the default ones, then head over to thedownloads section of the Aerosoft forums to find a plethora of usercontributed aircraft templates and profiles. There's a 'flow' in the flight planning process as there is a'flow' in a textbook cockpit preparation procedure. In PFPX that flowis going to be in this order: aircraft setup, schedule setup, payloadsetup, fuel setup, route setup, alternate setup, ETOPS setup,computation, and publication. We've looked at aircraft and schedulesetup. Payload setup is probably the simplest step in the flow. Choosethe number of adults, children and infants along with the weight oftheir baggage and anything else that will go into the cargoholds. Ferrying an aircraft or feeling random or want to simulate afully loaded 777 long haul flight? Zero, random and max payload -there's buttons for all of them. I hear that airlines often assume oneadult passenger to represent 84 kilograms of weight. Weights likethese are configurable in PFPX via the options menu. And you get toconfigure them for each type of flight: scheduled, non-scheduled,military and others. This is an important feature. After all, 150 buffmarines are going to weigh a lot more than 150 civilians. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_13.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_14.jpgDepending on where your (virtual) airline is registered and whereyou are operating, there's a number of different fuel policies tochoose from. These fuel policies are exactly what are found and usedin the real world. Each is different in one way or the other from theothers and most of the time, this difference is in the reserve fuelpolicy. There are a number of fields here that you can fill out to addextra fuel such as contingency fuel, holding fuel, tankering fuel,ballast fuel, extra fuel for dispatch under MEL, and more. This isgreat as it allows so much flexibility and enables a lot of realismwhen planning fuel. For example, if I'm flying to an airport thatcharges for fuel way more than my origin airport, I can add fuel forthe return flight as 'tankering fuel'. Need some extra fuel in thetanks of the Concorde or MD-11 to balance the plane? Add it as ballastfuel. The most important aspect of fuel planning is of courseaccuracy. I'd like to get it out there that out of the box, thedefault PFPX aircraft profiles and fuel policies work reallywell. Most of the time I found that my virtual fuel consumption wasaccurate to within a few 100 kilograms of what PFPX calculated. Thereare some caveats here. You'll see such accurate results only if a fewcriteria are met. First is of course, either your aircraft isrealistic or the profile for your aircraft is specifically tailoredfor it. Next is that the conditions under which you plan your flightwill actually turn out to be the conditions you will experience inyour simulator. And lastly, the performance parameters that you planyour flight with in PFPX should be the same as the parameters you giveyour aircraft's FMS: read things like cost index, etc. If this kind ofharmony exists, then your fuel numbers will be pretty accurate. Withthe default 737-800 profile and using the excellent Zibo 737 forX-Plane, I found my fuel consumption to be accurate to 100 kilogramson many flights. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_15.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_16.jpgTo burn that fuel, you'll need a route. And if you can't give oneto PFPX, it can find one for you. There's probably more than analgorithm or two at work in the background. Regardless, PFPX can finda route to suit your requirements whether you want a route that's highaltitude, low altitude, via certain waypoints, not via certainwaypoints, and the like. Much like the aircraft database, there's aroute database allowing you to store your own routes or pick one fromthe 9000 real world ones that come with the product. Now that we're onthe subject of routing, it's important to point out that yes, there isnavigational data at play here. Which means that for a realistic andintegral experience, you'll need the latest navigational data athand. That data, as usual, can come from either Navigraph or Aerosoftthemselves. I used PFPX with Aerosoft's NavDataPro. By default,however, AIRAC cycle 1302 data from Aerosoft is bundled with theproduct. Each time you update your navigational data, you'll have tohave your previously stored routes checked for compliance to the newnavigational data. Here is where I found that out of the 9000 realworld routes that come with PFPX, only 4000 will end up beingcompliant to the latest AIRAC cycle data at the time of writing this(cycle 1901). Routing isn't so straightforward in the real world as it is in thesimulator. There's rules and regulations in the form of routingconstraints and altitude caps to follow. No red faced regulatoryenforcer is going to come breathing down your neck if you bust arestriction or two in the simulation world. Even then, wouldn't it benice (or rather would you be nice enough) to follow such restrictionswhen planning your virtual routes? PFPX can account for theserestrictions when planning out your routes. You'll need to go an extramile, however, and download some files from the Aerosoft forumsdownload section if you want to have this data available for thesoftware to use. If you notice that certain segments of your plannedroute have you climb or descend to a particular altitude just for thatsegment, then it's happening because PFPX is accounting for routerestrictions and altitude caps. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_17.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_18.jpgPFPX can generate routes that are biased to realize some savingsgoal such as time, distance, fuel or cost. If you don't like thegenerated route, you could of course force it to use your own route oralter portions of the generated route. Some of the reasons you may notlike a generated route is that PFPX might select a runway that isusually not used for takeoff/landing and/or selects the wrong SID/STARfor the runway. Occasionally, a STAR wouldn't be automaticallyselected at all. Remember that at the end of the day, it's a computerprogram that's trying to do this for you and it can't think foritself. Generated routes will rarely match up with real world flightplans or what you see on web sites like FlightAware. Nevertheless, thegenerated routes are great most of the time especially forlong/ultra-long haul flights. There's a catch when it comes to trans-oceanic flights. The routingalgorithm doesn't pick an oceanic track on its own. Rather, it'll haveyou fly pretty much the direct great circle over the ocean referred toas a 'random route' in the real world. This is okay if you're crossingthe ocean during a time window for which no oceanic tracks are validor if you're flying along a path that doesn't have any tracksavailable. But for the sake of realism and efficiency, if you arecrossing the pond during the period NATs are available and valid, youshould use them. This is especially true when flying eastwards overthe Atlantic. You're much better off riding the jetstream using a NATthan taking the seemingly shorter great circle route. I'll talk moreabout oceanic track messages and ETOPS later in the review. Know thatthese auto-generated routes won't hamper your hopes of uneventfuloceanic crossings. If it's true realism and efficiency you seek,however, you'll need to proactively intervene in the routingprocess. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_19.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_20.jpgA really neat routing feature in PFPX is the ability to re-dispatcha flight mid-air. What this means is that instead of planning for yourflight all the way to your destination, you'll plan till some airportthat this a relatively short distance from the actualdestination. You'll also select a fix called the re-dispatch fix. Ashort time before getting to your re-dispatch fix, you'll determine ifyou have enough fuel to safely continue from the re-dispatch fix tothe intended destination. If yes, then the going's good. Else, divertto the re-dispatch airport. Why on earth would a flight crew and adispatcher put themselves through the hassle of an en-routere-dispatch? Fuel savings and/or higher payload capacity is theanswer. The aircraft can legally get by by carrying only enoughreserve fuel for the portion of the route from the re-dispatch fix tothe destination airport. The advantages for flights with an en-routere-dispatch are realized when the route is sufficiently longenough. It's great that PFPX allows for this kind of planning. The OFP(spoken of later in the review) is going to look different for aflight with a planned re-dispatch and indeed it does in PFPX too. PFPXcan automatically compute a re-dispatch in your route or you canmanually take care of it too. En-route you can fire up PFPX again tore-release your flight plan from the dispatch fix to the destinationairport. This is a great feature to have. Hats off to the developmentteam for this one. Life isn't sunshine and rainbows all the time. And since humanbeings are still flying planes, that's true in the aviation sphere ofthings too. There are a multitude of reasons you can't land at yourplanned destination airport. Which is why there's alternate fuel andto burn that fuel, an alternate airport to fly to. While planning outyour flight, PFPX can find about four alternate airports for yourdestination. And it can even find routes to those airport. You canplan your flight with two alternates too. Of course, manuallyselecting alternates and routes to them is also possible. You willprobably go for the manual routing option here a lot because most ofthe time PFPX chooses a rather unsatisfactory route having you flysome SID from your destination and a STAR at your alternate from anawkward angle. Interestingly, the tool can also account for a takeoffalternate and a point-of-no-return alternate. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_21.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_22.jpgWell now that brings us to ETOPS: Extended-Range Twin-EngineOperational Performance Standards. It's no longer called ETOPS,however. It's called EDTO: Extended-Range Diversion TimeOperations. In the FAA sphere of things, however, you're free tocontinue calling it ETOPS. This is a complex topic when viewedholistically but there's a simple way to explain it. EDTO is acertification that allows an aircraft to operate in areas where it isgreater than 60 minutes of single engine flying time away from anadequate alternate airport. Dear pedantics, yes, that's not a perfectdefinition but it gets the point across. So if your shiny virtual 777is ETOPS-180 certified then what it means is that it can fly anywherein the virtual world as long it is no greater than three hours ofsingle engine flying time away from an adequate alternate airport. Ofcourse there's a lot more at play here because there are different'scenarios' to consider when planning for flights in ETOPSzones. Scenarios like engine out, decompression, etc. PFPX allows youto plan flights in ETOPS zones and ships with profiles and scenariosfor some twin engine aircraft. The tool does the job of figuring outwhich portions of your planned route are ETOPS segments, i.e., morethan 60 minutes of single engine flying time away from a suitablealternate airport. Based on your ETOPS policy, it'll also figure outen route adequate airports and include information about en-routediversions to them in your final dispatch paperwork. ETOPS entry andexit points along with adequate airport circles will be visible on themap too. This feature is really well done. Hats off to the developersfor this one. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_23.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_24.jpgIf you're a keen observer, then you remember a 'flow' I spoke ofmany paragraphs ago. And you now probably realized that I went overthe core functional features of PFPX in the order of that flow. Afterdoing each part of the flow, all the information supplied, deduced andgathered needs to be consolidated into a set of papers you know asdispatch papers and will now know as an OFP: operational flightplan. A click of a button is all that's needed to compute and generatean OFP once everything's done. Here's where you get a chance to revieweverything one last time and if it's all good, release the flight planfor printing and hand over to the virtual flight crew. Apart from theOFP, a set of tabs will let you analyze everything from a fuelsummary, weather, NOTAMS, track messages and any warnings about yourplan. There's also a few charts that give a good visual representationof your planned vertical profile and approach area, among otherthings. The most important document you'll review before releasing a planis the OFP. The virtual OFP looks very much like a real life one. Thelayout of an OFP varies from operator to operator and PFPX allowsthird party templates to be used to generate an OFP. By default twotemplates are available and there are a lot more available from thedownloads section of the Aerosoft Forums. This is a great featurebecause some real world airline templates are available for downloadtoo. Regardless of the template you use, the OFP will containinformation about your payload, fuel, route, alternates, EDTO relateddata, route waypoint information, and weather information such asclimb, cruise and descent forecasts. The default templates work greatand are quite realistic looking. This is important as this is thedocument you'll use in the flight deck when cross referencing fuelcalculations and FMS data entries. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_25.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_26.jpgBefore we proceed further, I think it's important that I elaborateon the role of the PFPX server subscription in the planningprocess. Aside from weather and winds aloft data, a subscription getsyou up-to-date terminal area forecasts along with METARS, up-to-dateoceanic track data and messages, and NOTAMS. If you plug in a thirdparty weather engine into PFPX, you'll probably still get METARS andweather data (including winds aloft). What I'm not sure of is if TAFswill still be available along with the capability to show the varianceof winds aloft over a period of time through an overlay animation onthe map. NOTAMS are real world ones and are available for most partsof the world. They're incredibly detailed and a menu option can beused to regulate how detailed they can get. You're unlikely to usethis in the simulation world unless you are an embodiment of the an'as real as it gets' believer. Unless you plan to fly across vast expanses of water, you probablywon't need oceanic track messages. If you do, however, then trackmessages are indispensable for you. With some proactive intervention,you can circumvent the absence of a server subscription for thisbit. However, if you do use it, then you have the most current oceanictrack messages and data readily available in the program. You candirectly refer to a track in your flight plan much like an airway anduse all the data that accompanies the associated trackmessage. There's good news here and that is that it's now possible tomanually load in track messages from the internet and use them in PFPXas if you never had a server subscription. This is great! A feature called CFMU/IFPS validation was earlier part of theserver subscription but it was made free at some point of time due toimmense demand. It's a form of flight plan validation that applies forportions of a filed flight plan that are within EUairspace. Basically, it's going to check your route and let you knowif it's okay to fly along it in the way you've planned. If validationfails, a set of error codes and descriptions are presented in orderfor you to make amends to your route. This is a great and convenientfeature for realism if you plan to fly a lot in the EU. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_28.jpgOne question remains and that is how you'll access all this data inthe cockpit. The answer is that you can 'release' a flight plan muchlike a real dispatcher and print it or save it as a PDF. The softwaregives you the power to choose how detailed this PDF is going to bemostly with regards to en-route weather charts and a few otherthings. Do you hate manually entering long routes into the FMS? I suredo. PFPX helps you out there with the ability to export your route ina wide variety of formats. This enables direct loading of routes intoyour flight simulator or into an add on FMC via means of a CO RTE(company route). There's also the option to export this data directlyto the VATSIM flight plan filing page from where you can makeadditional entries and/or adjustments and file your flight plan. There's one fact that's clear now: this software is loaded! But itisn't over yet. There are more than a couple of features left to goover. For instance, the tool can connect to FS2004/FSX/P3D via FSUIPCand display a table with details of active AI traffic and even showsthem on the map! Similarly, you can also see who's online on VATSIM orIVAO be it a fellow pilot or a controller. They'll be visible on themap too. PFPX has a built in browser too, using which you can visitpopular web sites like FlightAware and RouteFinder straight out ofPFPX. There are also links to significant weather charts for differenttimes for pretty much the whole world. And the best part is that youcan add links to other pages and categorize them for organized tabbedaccess. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_27.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_29.jpgThere's so much on offer in PFPX. Hopefully, I've covered the partsyou're likely to use with sufficient detail. There are some featuresof PFPX that I feel I'm probably not going to use unless I became aflight dispatcher in the real world. For example, you could modifyairport planning data to specify the operational characteristics of anairport like preferred departure runways, routes, alternates, etc. Ifyou're game, you can define your own NOTAMS and METAR for theairport. Not enough? You can even supply phone numbers, e-mailaddresses and radio frequencies for airport staff and the fuelsupplier! And I'm quite sure during planning, it's even possible tosupply parameters such as fuel costs, delay costs, etc. that can betaken into account to generate a minimum cost route. Then, there's theability to edit restricted airspace, route restrictions and to createuser defined waypoints and airways. And if that wasn't enough then youcan go ahead and create your own fuel policy too. So many features combined with a lack of experience can disconcerta novice flight simulation enthusiast. Thankfully, there are more thana few resources to help you get up to speed with PFPX. For starters,there's a nicely written product manual that will give you a run downof what's what and what does what. The manual is also a good source ofsuperficial knowledge of important flight planning concepts. Forin-depth knowledge and guided tutorials, FlightSimSoft themselves havesuggested a few YouTube videos on their web site. Apart from that,there are many videos made by different YouTubers to help one learnthe basic and advanced features of PFPX. A simple Google search willhelp you find these. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_30.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_31.jpgNow onto the topic of comparing PFPX withSimbrief.Simbrief is a free online flight planning tool. It's known to bepowerful and is often considered a sizable match for PFPX. However,I've never used it so I can't really comment about how well itcompetes with PFPX. I did some research, however, and it appears thatfeature-wise, PFPX is definitely a richer product. Simbrief doesn'thave its own route generation engine and I don't think it can useweather data from add-on software like Active Sky. It requires aNavigraph subscription for the latest navigational data. It won't workwith Aerosoft's NavData Pro. Prima facie, however, it appears to be agood match for PFPX in terms of some core flight planning features. Dotake note of the caveats that come with its usage, though. Despite ofthat, the general consensus is that Simbrief is a more automated andeasy to use flight planner. However, it isn't as feature rich anddoesn't give you the same level of control over planning as PFPXdoes. I believe the choice you make in this matter depends on how muchyou fly, how realistic you want to be, where and what you fly, and thelevel of control you want over flight planning. These are the reasonswhy, I'll leave this choice entirely to you. However, if you flyairliners a lot, like to do planning with a lot of realism and controland especially like to fly over oceans, then I believe PFPX is thebetter option for you. But that's just me. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_32.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_33.jpgThis turned out to be quite a long review. I hope I've coveredeverything that you would've wanted to know in sufficient detail. Forall decisions that need to be taken in the cockpit, the Captain is thefinal authority. You too are a Captain in the matter of deciding topurchase PFPX. Nevertheless, I offer my verdict as a guidinglight. PFPX is a feature rich, realistic and functional virtual flightplanning software. There's so much it can do out of the box and itgives the user immense power to customize it to their needs. PFPX willsatisfy your needs whether you're in a casual mood, trying to bemoderately realistic or be like a real pilot. The product is wellsupported and the community offers a lot of additional supportingfiles for it. Nothing is perfect in life. And since PFPX is a part ofa flight simulator enthusiast's life, the same hold good for ittoo. Sure, they may be an occasional annoyance or two but on thewhole, this is a flight planning tool that can be seamlessly utilizedby a virtual airline pilot of any level of experience. If you have anyquestions, suggestions or constructive criticism, then please feelfree to reach out to me via e-mail or leave a comment below. I wishyou all a 2019 filled with happy flight planning, clear skies andsmooth landings! /images/reviews/pfpx/ASD-990-pfpx.jpgRohan Nair rohannair10@yahoo.co.in Purchase PFPX - Professional Flight Planner X
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Professional Flight Planner X (PFPX)Publisher: AerosoftReview Author: Rohan NairSuggested Price: $54.99/images/fsc/wbicons/store-buy-now-button.pngIf you've been into flight simulationlong enough, then chances are that are that at some point of time,you've asked yourself: how can I plan my virtual flights in the mostrealistic manner possible? Many of us, myself included, planned ourflights in a rather rudimentary manner in our early days of flightsimulation. At that time, it didn't matter to me whether I wascarrying the right amount of fuel or not. It didn't matter if I was atthe right altitude or not. ETOPS? Didn't even know it existed backthen. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_1.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_2.jpgAs the years went by, I really started to feel that while I mightbe flying the airplane by the books, I wasn't doing the part before itby the books. There was an add-on called vRoute Premium which helpedto shake off this feeling. I rememberreviewingit nearly a decade ago. There was also Aerosoft's Flight OperationsCenter and Ernie Alston's FSBuild. For quite a while, that's all wehad. A few free online planners were there but needless to say, theywere limited in functionality and what they would let you tinkerwith. About six years ago, much to the delight of several eagerlywaiting flight simulation enthusiasts, FlightSimSoft releasedProfessional Flight Planner Xhereon referred to as PFPX. Published byAerosoft,the mission of PFPX is quite simple: to be the most realistic andfeature rich flight planner for virtual aviation and appease thetastes of a diverse user base. So does PFPX enable the casual flightsimulation user to get realistic routes and fuel plans thereby givinghim the moderately realistic experience he wants? Does it give thecompulsive pedantic power user the ability to govern every aspect offlight planning like the real world and enable him to account forevery drop of fuel estimated for his trans-Atlantic ETOPS flight thathas an in-flight re-dispatch waypoint? Read this review to findout. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_3.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_4.jpgAs you might've expected, PFPX is a tool that runs independently ofyour flight simulator. Naturally, if your computer can run a flightsimulator, then you can run PFPX unless you are still using somethingolder than FS2002 on a pre-XP era system. I'd like to add, based on myexperience, that a 1 Mbps internet connection, at the least, is neededto enjoy all that this product can offer without frustration lest youare a really patient person when it comes to download speeds. Over the years, PFPX has been actively worked on by itsdevelopers. As the product evolved and eventually matured, majordevelopmental activities went into a lull with no new hotfix orrelease for many months. Not too long before the curtains were drawnin on 2018, version 2 was released and at the time of writing this,the latest version is 2.03. For about $55, you'll receive adownloadable version of PFPX and for no extra charge, a year'ssubscription to the PFPX servers. Let me get it out there right nowthat PFPX is fully usable as a flight planner without the serversubscription. The server subscription gives a few extra features suchas detailed weather, oceanic track messages and NOTAMs. We'll look atthose features in detail later in this review. Installation is likely to be uneventful and hey ho, 9000 real worldroutes for you out of the box! You'll be greeted with a user interfacethat reminds you of the 2010 version of Microsoft Office products. Itmay daunt some at first but as with many complex things in life, youdon't have to pay attention to all of it at once. The user interfacecan be customized to suit your likes be it the theme, what buttons andcontrols are visible, the size and layout of the frames and thelike. To get a run down of what's what, what does what and somehelpful general knowledge about flight planning, head on over to thestart menu to read the product manual. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_5.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_6.jpgThe user interface is functional and in my opinion, welldone. There are three distinct portions in the PFPX window. The topquarter spans across the width of the window and here's where all thevarious buttons and controls are to carry out a multitude ofactions. The remaining three-quarter of the screen is split intoframes whose size can be adjusted. The left one is where you'll seealmost all of the text info that PFPX can tell you. And it's alsowhere you'll be making the most important data inputs during theplanning flow. The right side one is the most interesting frame in thewindow. It's a map view and it'll do more than just show yourroute. Airports, navigational aids, airspace boundaries, airways,oceanic tracks, FIRs, UIRs, adequate airport circles, terrain,restricted airspace, AIRMET/SIGMET areas, wind barbs, jetstream andturbulence are also what the map can show you. Mousing over anyvisible element in the map will bring up a pop-up containing detailedinformation about that element be it an airport, airspace boundary,oceanic track, an airway or so. Weather data, NOTAMs and trackmessages are readily accessible from here. If you need to quickly jotsomething down, then there's a scratchpad for that too. Most of the program options and a few other features are tinkeredwith via separate pop-up windows. The UI is well tailored and willalways remind you of what is the next action item during the planningflow. The UI is also highly customizable via the program'ssettings. The software will offer a good user experience from a userinterface perspective. However, holistically, the application can puta smile on your face only if its core features perform well too. Readon to find out if they do. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_7.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_8.jpgNow before we deep dive into the details of what PFPX has to offer,let me brief you about that server subscription and external softwarethat PFPX can interface with. Your initial purchase of PFPX comes witha year's subscription free of cost. Subsequently, it's 12 Euros a yearto use the features that a subscription offers. Those features areaccess to the PFPX servers that will get up-to-date real time wind andweather data, METARs, Terminal Area Forecasts (TAFs), NOTAMs, andup-to-date oceanic track related data and messages (NATS - NorthAtlantic Track System, PACOTS - Pacific Organized Track System andAUSOTS - Australian Organized Track System). After reading thisreview, you'll be able to decide if you really need a serversubscription or not. In case you don't want a subscription, you still need weather andMETAR data, at the least, to make the most out of PFPX. Which is whyPFPX can be configured to use weather data downloaded by popularweather engines such asActive Skyand FS Global Real Weather. Are you a TOPCAT user? Well then you'll be happy to know that PFPXcan interface with TOPCAT too. You can assign a 'TOPCAT module' to theaircraft that you will plan your virtual flights with and once you'redone planning, a click of a button will send all required input datafor performance calculations to the TOPCAT window. Or, you can leavethat be and let PFPX take care of this in the background and insertthe results directly into your dispatch papers. I don't own TOPCAT butI did some research and it seems this tool hasn't been worked on forquite a while now and certain forum posts suggest that it won't beactively worked on anymore. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_9.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_10.jpgAnd now let's look at everything else in PFPX. Right from the timewe started going to school, our lives have been governed byschedules. Flight operations in the real world are heavily time boundwhich mandates the need for flight schedules. Being a flight planningtool, PFPX allows you to do just that with the schedule editor. Youcan schedule virtual flights by providing a minimum amount of planningdata. Then, when the time comes, pick out one of them, plan it and flyit! The tool allows for repetitive flights to be scheduled at desiredintervals and wow, you can even cancel a scheduled flight to annoyvirtual passengers. What's really neat is that if you fly for avirtual airline that supports scheduling via PFPX, then you can log inand download their flight schedule to PFPX. Maybe you're excited about scheduling and flying virtual flightslike a real airline pilot. Regardless, you'll need performance datafor the aircraft that you intend to fly. Out of the box, PFPX offers'profiles' for a plethora of popular airliners such the 737 series,the A320 family, the venerable 757/767 , the 777, the 747, the E-Jets,and so many more. Also included are templates built using theseprofiles that have been tailored to the particulars of popular add-onsfrom developers like PMDG, iFly and Aerosoft. Using these profiles andtemplates, you can maintain your own database of aircraft for yourvirtual flights. Each aircraft can be customized to uniquely identify it based onairline, seating configuration and more. There's so much that can becustomized pertaining to, but not limited to, weights, fuel, payload,diversion constraints, ETOPS scenarios and on board equipmentspecification. Take a look at the screen shots to see what I mean. Ican have a 737 with two separate configurations because through theday, I haul passengers and through the night, freight by having allthe seats removed. Airlines in the real world do this and this is whydifferent configurations for the same aircraft are allowed in PFPX. Asan aircraft ages, it becomes less efficient and let's face it,aircraft of the same type in the real world age differently dependingon where they're flying and how much they're flying. To account forthe implications of this, flight dispatchers in the real world can adda 'bias' for performance parameters, collected using in-flight datarecordings, so that planning accuracy is always spot on. PFPXsimulates this too! /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_11.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_12.jpgYou might've noticed through the screen shots that a number ofeditable fields for performance parameters for aircraft profiles areleft empty. Worry not as most of the important editable parameters arepre-populated. It's difficult to get all of this data for thesimulation world and I observed that it doesn't impact accuracy orreliability of PFPX all that much. Most of the default profiles andtemplates have their numbers more or less spot on and the averageflight simulation user will find them to be perfect out of the box. Incase you are a die hard realism seeking pedantic, you have the powerto edit them. Also, if you're missing some aircraft profile or if youcan't get to grips with the default ones, then head over to thedownloads section of the Aerosoft forums to find a plethora of usercontributed aircraft templates and profiles. There's a 'flow' in the flight planning process as there is a'flow' in a textbook cockpit preparation procedure. In PFPX that flowis going to be in this order: aircraft setup, schedule setup, payloadsetup, fuel setup, route setup, alternate setup, ETOPS setup,computation, and publication. We've looked at aircraft and schedulesetup. Payload setup is probably the simplest step in the flow. Choosethe number of adults, children and infants along with the weight oftheir baggage and anything else that will go into the cargoholds. Ferrying an aircraft or feeling random or want to simulate afully loaded 777 long haul flight? Zero, random and max payload -there's buttons for all of them. I hear that airlines often assume oneadult passenger to represent 84 kilograms of weight. Weights likethese are configurable in PFPX via the options menu. And you get toconfigure them for each type of flight: scheduled, non-scheduled,military and others. This is an important feature. After all, 150 buffmarines are going to weigh a lot more than 150 civilians. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_13.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_14.jpgDepending on where your (virtual) airline is registered and whereyou are operating, there's a number of different fuel policies tochoose from. These fuel policies are exactly what are found and usedin the real world. Each is different in one way or the other from theothers and most of the time, this difference is in the reserve fuelpolicy. There are a number of fields here that you can fill out to addextra fuel such as contingency fuel, holding fuel, tankering fuel,ballast fuel, extra fuel for dispatch under MEL, and more. This isgreat as it allows so much flexibility and enables a lot of realismwhen planning fuel. For example, if I'm flying to an airport thatcharges for fuel way more than my origin airport, I can add fuel forthe return flight as 'tankering fuel'. Need some extra fuel in thetanks of the Concorde or MD-11 to balance the plane? Add it as ballastfuel. The most important aspect of fuel planning is of courseaccuracy. I'd like to get it out there that out of the box, thedefault PFPX aircraft profiles and fuel policies work reallywell. Most of the time I found that my virtual fuel consumption wasaccurate to within a few 100 kilograms of what PFPX calculated. Thereare some caveats here. You'll see such accurate results only if a fewcriteria are met. First is of course, either your aircraft isrealistic or the profile for your aircraft is specifically tailoredfor it. Next is that the conditions under which you plan your flightwill actually turn out to be the conditions you will experience inyour simulator. And lastly, the performance parameters that you planyour flight with in PFPX should be the same as the parameters you giveyour aircraft's FMS: read things like cost index, etc. If this kind ofharmony exists, then your fuel numbers will be pretty accurate. Withthe default 737-800 profile and using the excellent Zibo 737 forX-Plane, I found my fuel consumption to be accurate to 100 kilogramson many flights. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_15.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_16.jpgTo burn that fuel, you'll need a route. And if you can't give oneto PFPX, it can find one for you. There's probably more than analgorithm or two at work in the background. Regardless, PFPX can finda route to suit your requirements whether you want a route that's highaltitude, low altitude, via certain waypoints, not via certainwaypoints, and the like. Much like the aircraft database, there's aroute database allowing you to store your own routes or pick one fromthe 9000 real world ones that come with the product. Now that we're onthe subject of routing, it's important to point out that yes, there isnavigational data at play here. Which means that for a realistic andintegral experience, you'll need the latest navigational data athand. That data, as usual, can come from either Navigraph or Aerosoftthemselves. I used PFPX with Aerosoft's NavDataPro. By default,however, AIRAC cycle 1302 data from Aerosoft is bundled with theproduct. Each time you update your navigational data, you'll have tohave your previously stored routes checked for compliance to the newnavigational data. Here is where I found that out of the 9000 realworld routes that come with PFPX, only 4000 will end up beingcompliant to the latest AIRAC cycle data at the time of writing this(cycle 1901). Routing isn't so straightforward in the real world as it is in thesimulator. There's rules and regulations in the form of routingconstraints and altitude caps to follow. No red faced regulatoryenforcer is going to come breathing down your neck if you bust arestriction or two in the simulation world. Even then, wouldn't it benice (or rather would you be nice enough) to follow such restrictionswhen planning your virtual routes? PFPX can account for theserestrictions when planning out your routes. You'll need to go an extramile, however, and download some files from the Aerosoft forumsdownload section if you want to have this data available for thesoftware to use. If you notice that certain segments of your plannedroute have you climb or descend to a particular altitude just for thatsegment, then it's happening because PFPX is accounting for routerestrictions and altitude caps. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_17.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_18.jpgPFPX can generate routes that are biased to realize some savingsgoal such as time, distance, fuel or cost. If you don't like thegenerated route, you could of course force it to use your own route oralter portions of the generated route. Some of the reasons you may notlike a generated route is that PFPX might select a runway that isusually not used for takeoff/landing and/or selects the wrong SID/STARfor the runway. Occasionally, a STAR wouldn't be automaticallyselected at all. Remember that at the end of the day, it's a computerprogram that's trying to do this for you and it can't think foritself. Generated routes will rarely match up with real world flightplans or what you see on web sites like FlightAware. Nevertheless, thegenerated routes are great most of the time especially forlong/ultra-long haul flights. There's a catch when it comes to trans-oceanic flights. The routingalgorithm doesn't pick an oceanic track on its own. Rather, it'll haveyou fly pretty much the direct great circle over the ocean referred toas a 'random route' in the real world. This is okay if you're crossingthe ocean during a time window for which no oceanic tracks are validor if you're flying along a path that doesn't have any tracksavailable. But for the sake of realism and efficiency, if you arecrossing the pond during the period NATs are available and valid, youshould use them. This is especially true when flying eastwards overthe Atlantic. You're much better off riding the jetstream using a NATthan taking the seemingly shorter great circle route. I'll talk moreabout oceanic track messages and ETOPS later in the review. Know thatthese auto-generated routes won't hamper your hopes of uneventfuloceanic crossings. If it's true realism and efficiency you seek,however, you'll need to proactively intervene in the routingprocess. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_19.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_20.jpgA really neat routing feature in PFPX is the ability to re-dispatcha flight mid-air. What this means is that instead of planning for yourflight all the way to your destination, you'll plan till some airportthat this a relatively short distance from the actualdestination. You'll also select a fix called the re-dispatch fix. Ashort time before getting to your re-dispatch fix, you'll determine ifyou have enough fuel to safely continue from the re-dispatch fix tothe intended destination. If yes, then the going's good. Else, divertto the re-dispatch airport. Why on earth would a flight crew and adispatcher put themselves through the hassle of an en-routere-dispatch? Fuel savings and/or higher payload capacity is theanswer. The aircraft can legally get by by carrying only enoughreserve fuel for the portion of the route from the re-dispatch fix tothe destination airport. The advantages for flights with an en-routere-dispatch are realized when the route is sufficiently longenough. It's great that PFPX allows for this kind of planning. The OFP(spoken of later in the review) is going to look different for aflight with a planned re-dispatch and indeed it does in PFPX too. PFPXcan automatically compute a re-dispatch in your route or you canmanually take care of it too. En-route you can fire up PFPX again tore-release your flight plan from the dispatch fix to the destinationairport. This is a great feature to have. Hats off to the developmentteam for this one. Life isn't sunshine and rainbows all the time. And since humanbeings are still flying planes, that's true in the aviation sphere ofthings too. There are a multitude of reasons you can't land at yourplanned destination airport. Which is why there's alternate fuel andto burn that fuel, an alternate airport to fly to. While planning outyour flight, PFPX can find about four alternate airports for yourdestination. And it can even find routes to those airport. You canplan your flight with two alternates too. Of course, manuallyselecting alternates and routes to them is also possible. You willprobably go for the manual routing option here a lot because most ofthe time PFPX chooses a rather unsatisfactory route having you flysome SID from your destination and a STAR at your alternate from anawkward angle. Interestingly, the tool can also account for a takeoffalternate and a point-of-no-return alternate. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_21.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_22.jpgWell now that brings us to ETOPS: Extended-Range Twin-EngineOperational Performance Standards. It's no longer called ETOPS,however. It's called EDTO: Extended-Range Diversion TimeOperations. In the FAA sphere of things, however, you're free tocontinue calling it ETOPS. This is a complex topic when viewedholistically but there's a simple way to explain it. EDTO is acertification that allows an aircraft to operate in areas where it isgreater than 60 minutes of single engine flying time away from anadequate alternate airport. Dear pedantics, yes, that's not a perfectdefinition but it gets the point across. So if your shiny virtual 777is ETOPS-180 certified then what it means is that it can fly anywherein the virtual world as long it is no greater than three hours ofsingle engine flying time away from an adequate alternate airport. Ofcourse there's a lot more at play here because there are different'scenarios' to consider when planning for flights in ETOPSzones. Scenarios like engine out, decompression, etc. PFPX allows youto plan flights in ETOPS zones and ships with profiles and scenariosfor some twin engine aircraft. The tool does the job of figuring outwhich portions of your planned route are ETOPS segments, i.e., morethan 60 minutes of single engine flying time away from a suitablealternate airport. Based on your ETOPS policy, it'll also figure outen route adequate airports and include information about en-routediversions to them in your final dispatch paperwork. ETOPS entry andexit points along with adequate airport circles will be visible on themap too. This feature is really well done. Hats off to the developersfor this one. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_23.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_24.jpgIf you're a keen observer, then you remember a 'flow' I spoke ofmany paragraphs ago. And you now probably realized that I went overthe core functional features of PFPX in the order of that flow. Afterdoing each part of the flow, all the information supplied, deduced andgathered needs to be consolidated into a set of papers you know asdispatch papers and will now know as an OFP: operational flightplan. A click of a button is all that's needed to compute and generatean OFP once everything's done. Here's where you get a chance to revieweverything one last time and if it's all good, release the flight planfor printing and hand over to the virtual flight crew. Apart from theOFP, a set of tabs will let you analyze everything from a fuelsummary, weather, NOTAMS, track messages and any warnings about yourplan. There's also a few charts that give a good visual representationof your planned vertical profile and approach area, among otherthings. The most important document you'll review before releasing a planis the OFP. The virtual OFP looks very much like a real life one. Thelayout of an OFP varies from operator to operator and PFPX allowsthird party templates to be used to generate an OFP. By default twotemplates are available and there are a lot more available from thedownloads section of the Aerosoft Forums. This is a great featurebecause some real world airline templates are available for downloadtoo. Regardless of the template you use, the OFP will containinformation about your payload, fuel, route, alternates, EDTO relateddata, route waypoint information, and weather information such asclimb, cruise and descent forecasts. The default templates work greatand are quite realistic looking. This is important as this is thedocument you'll use in the flight deck when cross referencing fuelcalculations and FMS data entries. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_25.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_26.jpgBefore we proceed further, I think it's important that I elaborateon the role of the PFPX server subscription in the planningprocess. Aside from weather and winds aloft data, a subscription getsyou up-to-date terminal area forecasts along with METARS, up-to-dateoceanic track data and messages, and NOTAMS. If you plug in a thirdparty weather engine into PFPX, you'll probably still get METARS andweather data (including winds aloft). What I'm not sure of is if TAFswill still be available along with the capability to show the varianceof winds aloft over a period of time through an overlay animation onthe map. NOTAMS are real world ones and are available for most partsof the world. They're incredibly detailed and a menu option can beused to regulate how detailed they can get. You're unlikely to usethis in the simulation world unless you are an embodiment of the an'as real as it gets' believer. Unless you plan to fly across vast expanses of water, you probablywon't need oceanic track messages. If you do, however, then trackmessages are indispensable for you. With some proactive intervention,you can circumvent the absence of a server subscription for thisbit. However, if you do use it, then you have the most current oceanictrack messages and data readily available in the program. You candirectly refer to a track in your flight plan much like an airway anduse all the data that accompanies the associated trackmessage. There's good news here and that is that it's now possible tomanually load in track messages from the internet and use them in PFPXas if you never had a server subscription. This is great! A feature called CFMU/IFPS validation was earlier part of theserver subscription but it was made free at some point of time due toimmense demand. It's a form of flight plan validation that applies forportions of a filed flight plan that are within EUairspace. Basically, it's going to check your route and let you knowif it's okay to fly along it in the way you've planned. If validationfails, a set of error codes and descriptions are presented in orderfor you to make amends to your route. This is a great and convenientfeature for realism if you plan to fly a lot in the EU. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_28.jpgOne question remains and that is how you'll access all this data inthe cockpit. The answer is that you can 'release' a flight plan muchlike a real dispatcher and print it or save it as a PDF. The softwaregives you the power to choose how detailed this PDF is going to bemostly with regards to en-route weather charts and a few otherthings. Do you hate manually entering long routes into the FMS? I suredo. PFPX helps you out there with the ability to export your route ina wide variety of formats. This enables direct loading of routes intoyour flight simulator or into an add on FMC via means of a CO RTE(company route). There's also the option to export this data directlyto the VATSIM flight plan filing page from where you can makeadditional entries and/or adjustments and file your flight plan. There's one fact that's clear now: this software is loaded! But itisn't over yet. There are more than a couple of features left to goover. For instance, the tool can connect to FS2004/FSX/P3D via FSUIPCand display a table with details of active AI traffic and even showsthem on the map! Similarly, you can also see who's online on VATSIM orIVAO be it a fellow pilot or a controller. They'll be visible on themap too. PFPX has a built in browser too, using which you can visitpopular web sites like FlightAware and RouteFinder straight out ofPFPX. There are also links to significant weather charts for differenttimes for pretty much the whole world. And the best part is that youcan add links to other pages and categorize them for organized tabbedaccess. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_27.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_29.jpgThere's so much on offer in PFPX. Hopefully, I've covered the partsyou're likely to use with sufficient detail. There are some featuresof PFPX that I feel I'm probably not going to use unless I became aflight dispatcher in the real world. For example, you could modifyairport planning data to specify the operational characteristics of anairport like preferred departure runways, routes, alternates, etc. Ifyou're game, you can define your own NOTAMS and METAR for theairport. Not enough? You can even supply phone numbers, e-mailaddresses and radio frequencies for airport staff and the fuelsupplier! And I'm quite sure during planning, it's even possible tosupply parameters such as fuel costs, delay costs, etc. that can betaken into account to generate a minimum cost route. Then, there's theability to edit restricted airspace, route restrictions and to createuser defined waypoints and airways. And if that wasn't enough then youcan go ahead and create your own fuel policy too. So many features combined with a lack of experience can disconcerta novice flight simulation enthusiast. Thankfully, there are more thana few resources to help you get up to speed with PFPX. For starters,there's a nicely written product manual that will give you a run downof what's what and what does what. The manual is also a good source ofsuperficial knowledge of important flight planning concepts. Forin-depth knowledge and guided tutorials, FlightSimSoft themselves havesuggested a few YouTube videos on their web site. Apart from that,there are many videos made by different YouTubers to help one learnthe basic and advanced features of PFPX. A simple Google search willhelp you find these. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_30.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_31.jpgNow onto the topic of comparing PFPX withSimbrief.Simbrief is a free online flight planning tool. It's known to bepowerful and is often considered a sizable match for PFPX. However,I've never used it so I can't really comment about how well itcompetes with PFPX. I did some research, however, and it appears thatfeature-wise, PFPX is definitely a richer product. Simbrief doesn'thave its own route generation engine and I don't think it can useweather data from add-on software like Active Sky. It requires aNavigraph subscription for the latest navigational data. It won't workwith Aerosoft's NavData Pro. Prima facie, however, it appears to be agood match for PFPX in terms of some core flight planning features. Dotake note of the caveats that come with its usage, though. Despite ofthat, the general consensus is that Simbrief is a more automated andeasy to use flight planner. However, it isn't as feature rich anddoesn't give you the same level of control over planning as PFPXdoes. I believe the choice you make in this matter depends on how muchyou fly, how realistic you want to be, where and what you fly, and thelevel of control you want over flight planning. These are the reasonswhy, I'll leave this choice entirely to you. However, if you flyairliners a lot, like to do planning with a lot of realism and controland especially like to fly over oceans, then I believe PFPX is thebetter option for you. But that's just me. /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_32.jpg /images/reviews/pfpx/t/PFPX_33.jpgThis turned out to be quite a long review. I hope I've coveredeverything that you would've wanted to know in sufficient detail. Forall decisions that need to be taken in the cockpit, the Captain is thefinal authority. You too are a Captain in the matter of deciding topurchase PFPX. Nevertheless, I offer my verdict as a guidinglight. PFPX is a feature rich, realistic and functional virtual flightplanning software. There's so much it can do out of the box and itgives the user immense power to customize it to their needs. PFPX willsatisfy your needs whether you're in a casual mood, trying to bemoderately realistic or be like a real pilot. The product is wellsupported and the community offers a lot of additional supportingfiles for it. Nothing is perfect in life. And since PFPX is a part ofa flight simulator enthusiast's life, the same hold good for ittoo. Sure, they may be an occasional annoyance or two but on thewhole, this is a flight planning tool that can be seamlessly utilizedby a virtual airline pilot of any level of experience. If you have anyquestions, suggestions or constructive criticism, then please feelfree to reach out to me via e-mail or leave a comment below. I wishyou all a 2019 filled with happy flight planning, clear skies andsmooth landings! /images/reviews/pfpx/ASD-990-pfpx.jpgRohan Nair rohannair10@yahoo.co.in Purchase PFPX - Professional Flight Planner X
