Eurocontrol offers not only validation service, but also a route-suggestion solution.
Do you have a URL for that?
Eurocontrol offers not only validation service, but also a route-suggestion solution.
Doesn't Eurocontrol and Afpex have a route proposal mechanism?
Does Eurocontrol offer any routing function?
I thought they offered only the validation gateway. Their Route Suggest function is available only via their B2B VPN, I believe, and has been at various times offered by various people.
AFPEX is just a terminal onto the AFTN; it is nothing to do with IFR routings. You can file a flight plan with it, etc.
I think I will give RR a try...
I guess with "filing is now free" you rather mean that the number of filings per year now not limited any longer. A big difference. Also, I talked to them at Aero and the "unlimited filing" is still - officially - a temporary promotion thing. We'll have to see whether unlimited filing becomes permanent.
No, Free filing is Free - as in no membership cost and no variable cost. Part of the advantage of moving off AFTN was the variable cost of filing basically went to zero. However, you don't get SMS messaging, autoroutes, support (especially not trip support or telephone support) in the free package.
Doesn't Eurocontrol and Afpex have a route proposal mechanism?
Read the other threads, but in a nutshell:
The Eurocontrol router (and all services that use it) does not support:
Multiple flight levels
Y/Z Plans
DCT's (other than a few specific ones)
Especially for normally aspirated IFR traffic, that often means no route or a very long one.
I guess with "filing is now free" you rather mean that the number of filings per year now not limited any longer. A big difference. Also, I talked to them at Aero and the "unlimited filing" is still - officially - a temporary promotion thing. We'll have to see whether unlimited filing becomes permanent.
BTW, you can file flight plans (VFR and IFR) just with their "basic" package, which is about 50 Euros a year. The only difference between this and the "full" service is the routing generator (which of course, is really the heart of the RR package).
Price of for the full package BTW has gone up from about 190 Euros to 240 euros this year.
AFAIK there is still only one "proper" autorouter So, the situation is still very poor for serious IFR flyers.
Doesn't Eurocontrol and Afpex have a route proposal mechanism?
On the other hand, even if there was only one router, why is that still poor?
Peter,
You should give Rocketroute a go (filing is now free and there is a 14 day trial of the whole service), we have a fair old team available to help on that side, whereas on FPP it is just me supporting it. I find the whole Rocketroute package when actually flying very good, particularly the iPad app with route packs, you get a SigWx, winds, departure/destination/alternate EAD plates, arrival/departure/alternate NOTAMS, plog, flightplan form all synced up to a nice (IMHO) organised structure loaded into the PDF browser. It is also a sensible place to keep a bunch of diversion plates. The mobile web version lets you do delays, cancels (and your own arrival message if the local ARO is closed) with very little bandwidth on either an Ios or android device.
On the Eurocontrol complexity. I honestly believe they are not trying to be difficult. They are just programmed to do everything in as complex a way as possible. I suspect it may be an industry funded training scheme to develop Java programmers (based on their interfacing process to EAD data) and Flash developers (based on the way the have done some of the public tools) ;-). It took weeks and weeks of work (after wading through a torturous application process) to get the EAD machine to machine downloads working and one week from the first phone call to the FAA until we had credentials, access methods, interfaces running and the full FAA data set loaded into production.
But if you want to run flash, you'll pretty much need a web browser, just for the infrastructure the flash plugin needs.
You could become B2B customer of Eurocontrol for relatively little money, I think even for free if you're happy with the 2 certificates you get. I don't know whether that is sufficient to get access to the verification facility.
I haven't done so because the pain level isn't big enough (i.e. the verification via the website works reasonably enough), and I didn't want to get through the hassle to sign the contract and then manage the VPN...
