Eurocontrol implementation of aircraft operating ceiling
After our discussion here, I got this reply:
Thank you for your email reporting this Aircraft Type not being adequate. Several IFPS users are actually facing similar problems, having to use a "wide" AT which doesn't cover properly some members of the family.
It is a recurrent problem due to the fact that ICAO doesn't provide enough AT designators, particularly when a variant exists. You mentioned the Beechcraft, yes BE36 doesn't cover the turbocharged engine variants.
Here in DNM we are working in close cooperation with the Eurocontrol BADA Team which is our AT performance parameters supplier, they became these last years one of the most accurate AT performance parameters supplier on the world, not to say the only one. In their turn, they addressed the issue to ICAO ATDSG group and they closely monitor the issue;
As a workaround to this problem and also in order to refine our computed profiles, there will be soon a possibility to give TOC and TOD in the RMK/ subfield of the field 18 element of flight plans. It will probably be available as from NM17.5 software release, relevant documentation is available on the NOP. This should help you in solving some performance issues.
It's an amazing accomplishment that the BADA Team addresses the issue to the ICAO ATDSG group and that with NM17.5 the docs will be available on the NOP!
Eurocrats... 
I was thinking the same thing.
They should just increase the maximum operating altitude of each ICAO type to the highest limit of all known variants. Problem solved.
But no: yet another entry in field 18!
I had a chat with a bloke from Eurocontrol. He promised someone will fix it but nothing happened. The whole disaster started as a new release of BADA database went live on 7.April. All aircraft with multiple versions especially turbo versions of BE36 AC11 and L1P are affected. If there is a different designator for the turbo version (P28T vs P28R) there is no problem.
Why not use a "TBM" type in the flight plan? I am 99% sure nobody will know or care, and you get a ~FL300 ceiling.
If Eurocontrol do this, i.e. they are happy to refuse validation for a type whose performance is known to exceed their database data, then two can play at the same game, as they say....
I have on 1 or 2 occassions flown with the wrong callsign, 1 digit out, and every ATCO along the ~700nm route would have heard me reading back N113AC while their computer was saying N114AC and not one of them cared about it. Clearly there is no database of tail numbers versus airframe type which Eurocontrol use for validation.
What about the hack to file ZZZZ as aircraft type, and specify it as a RMK/ in field 18? Would that work?
That sounds like Eurocontrol are not parsing that field.
I would bet that if they see ZZZZ in the a/c type, they go to the RMK/ stuff to look for it but if they are not successful in finding anything there, they just validate the whole thing OK.
If I was writing that sort of software, I would probably do that, because the very fact that I see ZZZZ in the a/c type is telling me that I don't have any data for it, and it would be daft to throw the flight plan out on the basis of data I don't have.
So, how about putting ZZZZ for the type and putting e.g. SEXY under remarks?
I didn't know that you have a Huey chopper.
That just shows that you can stick anything you like into certain boxes on the flight plan. It appears certain that you could fly around in a PA28, using the tail number of a TB20, and put a 737 in the type field. And if I can work this out, so can anybody else who might want to do that intentionally...
Why have they overcomplicated it to this extent anyway? Why not just leave it be the responsibility of the commander to know their aircraft's performance and file something that the aircraft can do? Seems to work fine in the United States.
Using the workaround there is a new error: ERROR EFPM243: AIRCRAFT TYPE IS ZZZZ BUT TYP Z IS NOT PRESENT (ARCTYP) ROUTER ERROR An unsupported response. Please report this error.
Nice
