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European IFR flight planning?

Now that I’ve got “the ticket” I am wondering again how to best do IFR flight planning and filing.

During my training in the US everything was done with Foreflight. There you enter or select departure and destination airport, then you click on a button called “route” and it shows you the shortest airway route plus routes and cruising altitudes that ATC has cleared before. You then check the winds aloft, other parameters, and then you simply hit “file”.

In my case we then got into the airplane, requested the clearance and programmed the flight plan into the Cirrus Perspective (G1000). During the actual flight the iPad with Foreflight was stowed in the middle console and not used once. Everything is on the MFD where I was able to look at airways, navaids, waypoints and modify the flight plan, if ATC were to change the routing during flight.

Now back in Europe the airplane equipment is going to be basically the same. But what is recommended to replace Foreflight?

I’ve looked at Rocket Route, the new autorouter.eu, the DFS AIS website, and Aeroplus’ flight plan app. For VFR I am a happy user of Skydemon and it has served me well in Germany, Austria, Czech and Slovak Republic, Hungary and Romania.

Foreflight also has a very good representation of the VFR sectional chart and the IFR enroute charts. This morning I’ve been trying out the new iPad app from Rocket Route but I’m disappointed. It is quite sluggish and would not feel comfortable using it in flight to find a waypoint quickly. The airway mode of Skydemon seems to do a much better job for that.

Should I just get a paper enroute chart, do planning and filing with autorouter.eu, Aeroplus or the DFS-AIS and basically stick to the abilities of the G1000 in flight?

I’m actually wondering why Route Rocket is being praised that much. Or are people mostly using their web app before the flight and then fly with printouts?

Looking for suggestions …

Frequent travels around Europe

Excuse me for pointing out the obvious:

http://www.euroga.org/forums/website/2162-new-eurocontrol-ifr-route-generator

EBZH Kiewit, Belgium

I’ve already mentioned that in my question. :-)

One more thing. When using Foreflight in the US I had access to all the government provided approach charts. So we prepared using those charts and then during the flight we had the Jeppesen charts on the MFD as well as the full procedures in the database with their graphical representation and required altitudes on the MFD attached to the flight plan.

I have a login at the Eurocontrol website where one can download all charts for Europe. I also know that Rocket Route sends a briefing package with those same charts included.

I guess my main reason for asking is that it seems quite cumbersome and complicated to collect information from that many sources and I feel a bit lost.

Frequent travels around Europe

I guess my main reason for asking is that it seems quite cumbersome and complicated to collect information from that many sources and I feel a bit lost.

I think the best solution for the charts would be a (shared) Jeppesen subscription for use on a tablet.

EDDS - Stuttgart

You will find that if you put 100 IR pilots into a room and asked them you will get 100 different answers

PPL training is rather divorced from going A to B, but IR training (the European FTO sausage machine) is 99% divorced from any reality, so those who hung in there (mostly aircraft owners, or in small syndicates) have developed their own workflows.

The Eurocontrol route generator procedure has varied hugely over the years. I started in 2005 and for amusement you can read here. Especially that Italian “ASA” flight simmer site, which was all there was back then. Then Autoplan and FlightPlanPro blew the game wide open, pissed off Jeppesen (who charge $xxx/month for this stuff), pissed off Eurocontrol (who have since undergone a big change) and nowadays it is easier than ever before. I think Autorouter (http://router.euroga.org for your existing EuroGA login) is currently the best tool, with FPP as a backup.

I suggest you read my link above. European IFR isn’t complicated but there are things to watch. I also have some notes here.

It is indeed the case that European pilots collect preflight stuff from all over the place. That is just the way things have developed. Weather services change, and different people like different websites. Nearly all of it comes from the US GFS model, tafs and metars normally come from ADDS (USA) although you can get then via Eurocontrol from e.g. here Personally, I have really simplified my wx planning in recent years and just use tafs, metars, MSLP, IR, radar, and that’s it. Take a look at one of my longer writeups here – the details are in there. I use EuroFPL for flight plan filing (with the UK NATS AFPEX system as a backup) but don’t use their briefing pack. I have had a look at RR but find their user interface a bit too crowded, but that’s just my view, and I know of pilots who use RR for everything (and pay them lots). For a quick and dirty 5-day outlook I use the UK MSLPs e.g. here

The free AIP terminal charts are mostly poor; they are produced to discharge ICAO obligations, not to produce a cockpit usable product or to compete with commercial providers (I have actually been told that by the UK CAA). So, a lot of pilots have “friends in low places” and get Jeppesen terminal charts from them. Very few people pay the full price for that stuff. But if you want them on a panel mounted device (G500 etc) then you have to pay the full price – about €2000/year for all of Europe.

I think European IFR is easier today than at any other time in the past, except during an era way before my time and before Eurocontrol got going and screwed the whole system up. Wx and airport data (Customs, avgas, PNR, PPR, etc) permitting, you can be planned-up and done in minutes, for any trip in Europe.

Last Edited by Peter at 16 Apr 10:11
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Should I just get a paper enroute chart

Now that is about the most useless thing to have in the cockpit You would need loads of these charts and they are updated every AIRAC cycle, not once a year. What is wrong with SkyDemon’s airway representation? To be honest, I don’t even need that because IFR is all about waypoints and navaids and you have them in the G1000 and every other GPS. The only thing I use in addition to my GPS is a PLOG which I download to my tablet or sometimes print on paper. For the EAD charts, there are multiple sources that allow you to conveniently download the charts to your tablet.

I guess my main reason for asking is that it seems quite cumbersome and complicated to collect information from that many sources

You will have to get used to it. The most important thing is weather and for this, you need several sources in order to get a good briefing, especially when the decision is non-obvious.

We do plan to provide a complete briefing pack on autorouter, currently we offer a PLOG (which was designed based on what we consider to be good, feedback welcome!) and a GRAMET vertical route weather. Next will be METAR/TAF and NOTAMs although I hate the 10 pages of enroute NOTAMs, those are not relevant for IFR and I never look at them.

ForeFlight is great, there is nothing in Europe that comes close. I think SkyDemon is the closest, it offers EAD plates and they are constantly improving their IFR capabilities.

You do need a VFR chart (of some sort) for any of

  • Z or Y flight plan
  • any airport being OCAS (possibly OCAS only during the hours you are going there)
  • any possibility of any airport being OCAS (including enroute diversions)
  • an emergency descent (for terrain, etc)
Last Edited by Peter at 16 Apr 10:16
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

The free AIP terminal charts are mostly poor; …

They are more than poor, because most don’t even give you the minima, but some OCA from which you have to calculate them yourself. And the format is different for every country. And you won’t get any decent international route charts. One Jeppesen license is good for four installtions, it should not be too difficult to find other pilots interested in sharing one. That makes 500Euros per year for full European coverage with daily (if necessary) updates, which is about what you have to spend for one hour renting of a good IFR tourer in Germany. Certainly not too much.

You do need a VFR chart (of some sort) for any of…

Not necessarily. For most of the points you list, JeppView is good engough. It has terrain, airspaces, runways, frequencies, everything. I haven’t seen a VFR chart since around 2005. Not even the dreaded French ramp inspectors ask for one…

Last Edited by what_next at 16 Apr 10:24
EDDS - Stuttgart

We might disagree on terminology but for any VFR section (planned or potential) you need very good awareness of CAS and of terrain/obstacles.

How you achieve that is another matter.

I don’t think the Jepp VACs (VFR approach charts, which come in the VFR Europe package) give you that, because they are local to the airport only. In some places you might be VFR for 50nm (like… the UK). But I appreciate you will not be doing that in a Citation, partly because it would not be good safety management (low down, lots of traffic) and partly due to the fuel burn.

Personally I run the actual “printed” VFR charts as a GPS moving map. The charts come from “interesting” sources… Other solutions are PocketFMS, Skydemon, Memory Map (for the UK only; CAA charts), JeppFD (the full version) plus JeppFD-VFR, and no doubt some others.

Last Edited by Peter at 16 Apr 10:37
Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

Peter summed it up nicely in his first post. It’s indeed a very personal thing. Everyone has to develop his own workflow and compile his set of tools for flightplanning. Also, due to the dynamics of the market and its offerings, one has to review his workflow (and the used tools) about once a year in order to optimize its effectivity, efficiency and in order to keep costs down.

All that has to come from experience. Not from following the workflow of somebody else.

A few more notes:

Personally, I like to have at least some kind of IFR enroute chart with me. Since I have a Jeppesen VFR sub for the iPad, I use the enroute chart that comes with it. RR now also supplies snippets of the enroute chart with their briefing packs but it is not well implemented and they’re not georeferenced. I have not used RR’s new app yet since I find it silly to ask customers to pay for it separately.

Enroute charts do come in handy in flight when ATC calls you and says “I have a new routing for you…”. With the enroute chart, one can evaluate whether it is the case to grumble and try to propose something different or whether to say “thank you very much”. Now, this can also be done if you know how to use your GPS and have a decent size MFD to visualize the new proposed route. Sometimes ATC will even propose two options (sometimes with diffferent altitudes) and it really pays off (in terms of fuel and time saved) if one knows which is better.

As a matter of fact, RR has become the quasi-standard for IFR in Europe. Personally, I use it all the time, but I still have a lot of complaints about it. Their NOTAMs are rubbish and often incomplete. So I still use DFS AIS separately. The same goes for their weather. I still use DWD separately before every flight. So actually I use RR only for route development, filing, managing and for their briefing packs. Autorouter.eu is a nice, slick tool, but as long as it doesn’t offer filing, delaying, canceling etc. of flight plans, it remains no more than a single tool in a pilot’s toolkit.

Last Edited by boscomantico at 16 Apr 11:12
Mainz (EDFZ) & Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany
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