I notice that we get a lot of level changes. If you can think of a way to avoid them where possible, e.g as a “flatten” function (selectable). We had that and what it did was to seek out the lowest flight level which could be kept for a certain amount of time or distance and then go there and stay there.
Shows you have been out of the IFR game for a long time. As Peter said it’s just part of today’s game.
In fact, I would say that altitude changes is the most important lever this new engine has in order to come up with shorter routings than Rocketroute (which doesn’t use level changes more than absolutely necessary).
This whole IFPS flightplanning game has become pretty much a joke nowadays with very little pratical meaning. And ATC knows that.
In Germany (whose ATC is quite user-friendly and service-oriented) this has reached extreme levels. Nowadays, when I depart IFR in Germany and call up the departure controller, often the first thing they will say is “what is your requested level today?” This means they know that flighplanning is all bogus and they automatically assume that the filed level was chosen merely to get an acceptable routing…
Thank you very much, Achimha and Tomjnx !
The route generator works very well for the routes I have tried so far. Usage is very intuitive.
Also, the route generator seems to be quite fast as well !
I found a bug which I reported at 11:53. It was solved at 12:03 
What are the future plans for this route engine? Will it remain free of charge or do you have plans to turn it into a commercial service?
This business of filing a route with lots of level changes has always been there, ever since Eurocontrol got going, and ATC have always disregarded most of it. It’s not a case of somebody having been out of the game for a few years.
For example, to get back into the southern UK from say Belgium, one has/had to dip down to FL090. This is ignored in reality.
What is not ignored are minimum TMA crossings e.g. crossing Frankfurt at whatever the current min level is – FL120/130 last time I checked. So if you fly e.g. Shoreham to Prague and you really want to do it at FL110 (e.g. because you have no oxygen) and you file the whole route at FL110, then you will get a massive dogleg when you get to Germany. Also NE France has some military areas which can’t be crossed below FL110. So, personally, I always file for FL140/150/160. Yes, you do need oxygen but sadly that is a done deal for European IFR nowadays – if you want reasonable routings generally. A lot can be done in France at FL070-110 but it won’t work for long distances. And, having filed for say FL150, if the wx is nice, one can ask for a “stop climb” at FL110/120 or so and fly on until ATC have something to say about it
The early tools – Autoplan and FlightPlanPro – went through various iterations and used to / still do generate routes with plenty of level changes which bear no relation to reality.
What are the future plans for this route engine? Will it remain free of charge or do you have plans to turn it into a commercial service?
We have a deal with ATC. On all routes filed with us, you will be sent into a holding and cleared for approach after giving your credit card number for which we get a 50/50 split. The product as you see will remain free of charge, that was the whole motivation behind the project. We will use other means to recover the costs.
No, but that game has only started when IFPS was devised. If I remember correctly, this has only happened sometime around 1999 or so in Central Europe.
The minimum for Frankfurt TMA has been FL140 for a few years now.
The minimum for Frankfurt TMA has been FL140 for a few years now.
So here’s a nice anecdote. The IFPS computer has a restriction for the Frankfurt FL140 crossing, it used to be called ED3115A. Unfortunately DFS made a mistake when they coded the restriction and in order to satisfy it, one would just have to climb to FL140 somewhere in Germany and then was allowed to cross Frankfurt at any level. IFPS would accept such flight plans. Of course our software came up with this idea as when you fly in e.g. a SR20, it makes sense to climb to FL140 and then immediately thereafter back lower because the speed will be higher. It was us that told DFS about the mistake and they have corrected it with the new restriction ED3115Y.
Pre-IFPS, you got the airway charts out and filed the flight plan.
Just like they still teach today on the JAA/EASA IR at every UK FTO. That has not worked in Europe for 15 years.
As I say, the reason the FTO sausage machine is able to keep grinding up young men and women and spitting out “airline pilots” at the other end is because 99% of them never have to use any of this.
Just my personal opinion, nothing more 
Actually there is a suprisingly large community of IR holders still flying who do that, usually with “IFPS REROUTE ACCEPTED”. Like the Japanese soldiers who lived on the islands for decades thinking the war had not yet ended (allegedly). I suspect the PBN stuff is going to put them out of business, however. Sadly, some of them choose to fly VFR (in IMC) because of this hassle – occasionally with fatal results.
Peter, many thanks but I can’t login. Can you please help me?
Thank you
I’m impressed. But I do have an issue with the output and the use of DCTs:
EGSC EDFM GC 356 miles
By default:
EGSC ADNAM DCT CLN L608 SASKI DCT BOBMA DCT BARTU DCT BUB DCT LGE DCT PESOV T180 TOBOP DCT ABDAP DCT BOLKI DCT EDFM (360)
If I force via HELEN and LNO:
EGSC ADNAM DCT CLN L608 SASKI L179 HELEN DCT OB DCT LNO DCT PESOV T180 TOBOP DCT ABDAP DCT BOLKI DCT EDFM (361)
What I actually want:
EGSC ADNAM DCT CLN L608 SASKI L179 COA Y50 GOLEX L607 ARCKY T181 TOBOP T847 OLIVI Q762 BOLKI (384)
Yes, the route is marginally longer, but in practice they’ll cut the corners for me in the air. What the DCTs do is:
But I do need DCTs on departure as far as CLN, for example. So can I force it to use DCTs “only when it really has to”?
But I do need DCTs on departure as far as CLN, for example. So can I force it to use DCTs “only when it really has to”?
The UK is the most difficult part of the world when it comes to IFR route planning. It’s a country where there is very little controlled airspace, yet it is the most liberal of all when it comes to using DCTs. That is an awkward combination. It is very hard for us to know what DCTs are good in the UK and which are not. We can’t just forbid them because otherwise a lot of things don’t work out at all. Therefore we penalize them but don’t rule them out. Sometimes they need to be penalized harder to avoid them. We are probably going to replace the “Avoid DCTs in the UK” checkbox with a slider that allows you to choose how much you want to penalize them.
Other solutions use a lot of handcrafted special knowledge for the UK but this is not what we want to do. All we use is the Eurocontrol database and algorithms. The UK is very hard to do well with this approach.
