Autorouter updates (merged)

Anthony, this change is highly experimental and we need more feedback. Following the current political trend, we have separated Scotland from the UK with an artificial airspace. We do not apply the strict policy of heavily penalizing DCTs not mentioned in the SRD (standard route document) in airspace belonging to Scottish Control. We know it is still class G but from the feedback we got, it is actually not a problem to get good service in this area.

This has the danger of sending people to class G again that have no idea about this. However, Scotland has so little controlled airspace that it is a real problem. A difficult line we have to walk so any feedback is welcome!

autorouter – information about PPR/PNR/customs/immigration/etc.

One component of the autorouter engine is what we call FPAL (Flight Plan Addressing Language). This descriptive language allows us to define rules that evaluate flight plans and take action based on criteria. This can achieve many things:

- determine the AFTN addresses a flight plan needs to be sent to
- enforce certain restrictions
- give the user additional information

Apart from the addressing per the AIPs, we have started to implement a few additional rules:

1) UK GAR notices as outlined by the UK Border Force with links to the fax/email form and the commercial OnlineGAR

You can see that the UK side requires a GAR. The Belgian side doesn’t because EBOS has permanent customs but the system does not know that yet because we don’t have any rules for Belgium.

2) Customs and immigration rules for Germany, either always present, PNR or not possible. This implements the whole complexity found in Germany with differences between immigration (Schengen) and customs (EU) and the special concession of not requiring customs when leaving the EU without transporting goods.

3) Customs / immigrations rules for Switzerland including all specialities and links to the customs PNR web page.

Here you see that the flight is impossible because the German side does not offer customs. The Swiss side is OK if you submit a prior notice via the linked to form.

4) Customs / immigration for France with the current list of customs aerodromes.

Again, an impossible flight because Anemasse does not allow departures to a non EU destination.

5) Greece’s violation of Schengen/EU treaties, requiring a customs airports for entry/exit of the country

6) General hints if a flight crosses the EU or Schengen borders.

The way we do this is in a simple, almost self explanatory language that looks as follows:

or

The language and the data files have been given to the public domain and we hope it will be picked up by others and most importantly receive contributions. I am now looking for people that can help us by supplying information for other countries. What we want to have:

- list of airports offering customs/immigrations during opening hours
- list of airports offering customs/immigration on request
- special concessions / restrictions that are interesting for pilots

As you can see in the above examples, I have posted a few flights which are outright impossible due to missing customs. Such information can be very useful for a pilot.

So whoever wants to do something for the greater good of aviation, please supply the information but please make sure you have official references.

autorouter with Weight & Balance

The next time you open a route on autorouter, you will find a new section Weight & Balance which will show this:

So you go to your aircraft settings and open the tab Weight & Balance. The first half is about the stations in the aircraft, their maximum load and the arm

You can choose the unit of the arm, either inches or cm, whatever your POH uses and is more convenient for you. The mass is given in the unit that you chose for your aircraft (up in the “General data” section). You can add any number of stations of the desired type and give them your name of choice — with the exception of the Basic Empty Mass — this field will always be there and you should take the value from your last official w&b check. Fill out the data until you have all stations. Also watch the maximum fuel field, this will be updated to reflect the amount of fuel for all fuel tanks you configure (you specify the mass and it will automatically convert it to your desired fuel unit as selected in the “General data” section, based on the type of fuel).

When you’re done, it could look like this:

Now let’s have a look at the second part of the Weight & Balance settings, the load envelope:

Add envelope edges by clicking the button for as many times as you have edges on your POH diagram. This can be a bit tedious as most older POH only give you a diagram and no table. As you enter edges, the chart below will update and when you’re done, it will look exactly like your POH if everything was done correctly. It is very important to list the edges in a counter-clockwise fashion starting from the lower left. You can reorder the edges. Again, when done it might look like this:

Now you’re complete. Check the maximum takeoff mass (MTOM) once again and then save your aircraft. You can now open your routes and flight plans and start loading your aircraft:

The system will immediately tell you if your aircraft is correctly loaded and whether the center of gravity (COG) is inside the permitted envelope. The fuel on board value is automatically converted to the respective mass.

When you download the navigation log, you will get a second page that has all the gory details of your weight & balance, with tables and a diagram, designed to impress your ramp checker.

Have fun and let us know if there are any difficulties with it.

Yes, you’ve pointed out the trend. The thing that really needs brain cells and is very hard to do is generating Eurocontrol routes. That’s the core. However, pilots are lazy and don’t want to employ lots of tools among which they have to transfer data. Flight plan filing was therefore implemented (and is seeing a lot of growth in usage). Now pilots say they need a briefing pack that gets them through a possible ramp check. That obviously includes weight and balance. The fact that I have seen and used dozens of W&B tools and almost all of them suck completely (especially the ones that cost big bucks in the app stores) is an additional motivation.

Now the path towards “briefing pack complete” continues. Still quite a bit of functionality required but we’ll get there.

There is almost no machine readable data of this sort, which is why we started out doing this in the first place. For the French customs airports, I had to go through a map of France in the AIP and pick all airports whose name was surrounded by a box…