There is now the Autorouter
The Autorouter and FlightPlanPro (which shares code with RR which is not free) are the only two free facilities that generate optimised Eurocontrol routes.
Autorouter is the only pure-website facility that does it, which is important because it is client device independent.
I must say the number and the characteristic of the apps released by RR is very confusing.
Folks,
isn’t it a bit of a joke that they ask their customers (who have been paying 200+€s per year for the last three or four years now) to pay extra just in order to get the newest evolution of their App?
Moving map…fine. Whatelse is new (beside the format). Nothing it seems…
Today RocketRoute published their new “RocketRoute 4 Flight” Planning + Navigation for the Ipad – moving map included for € 8.99.
Available in the App Store. Don’t know about an Android version.
So filing a route over Belgium and then asking for a direct route over the Netherlands is unlikely to be successful.
Not a totally different country but a substantial change: on a recent flight from Czech Republic to Romania, my filed route was via Austria – Hungary – Serbia. When I asked the Austrian ATC if they could arrange a more direct route, they sorted it out in about 5 minutes, changing my crossing point into Hungary and routing me straight to Romania.
Is there a way to force the Rocketroute Autoroute function to generate a route via a certain waypoint?
Never tried it in Rocketroute proper, but Flightplan Pro (their Windows front end) can do it via any number of waypoints. It does generate routes with flight level changes, too.
Eurofpl is very popular, the engine is good and the pricing is better than Rocketroute although it does less.
How are you doing with your IR?
So are there still only three available IFR route-finding programs?
- rocketroute
- aeroplan
- flightplanpro
It seems from the above that you still have to provide some altitude options to guide these.
I heard Aeroplan has an export function into Skydemon while RocketRoute provides a comprehensive briefing pack and offers 24hour help desk. FPP is a standalone program.
Any other major differences? Other options?
Wow Bosco. Talk about blindness. I have changed the Min and Max FL loads and never paid attention to those fields.
I stand fully corrected.
Constraining the search in this way may of course make it unsolvable.
AFAICS, yes.
In the route section, open the tab “advanced” and then enter a must-fly-over waypoint in the line “waypoint 1”. For some reason, it does not always work, though (i.e. sometimes, RR ignores it).
It is indeed very useful. RR’s route engine unfortunately is not “geographically clever”. For example, routes from Northern Germany to say Deauville will have one cross the Channel twice – for no reason! (I know that in reality one will 99% not fly that route but one never knows and one day, ATC will say “that’s what you filed Sir”…)
Another one is from Germany to say Palanga in Lithuania. That one will unnecessarily take one through Russian airspace (with all that it entails…permits, airway fees, etc)…
Is there a way to force the Rocketroute Autoroute function to generate a route via a certain waypoint?
No.
