Expected Behavior:
a) The āFROGO MOD SNSā is (maybe) offered, although as itās usually a high altitude route and entered low altitude, I would put it at the bottom of the list if at all.
b) The ālong pathā results are not offered
c) The low altitude routes are offered.
These are actual routes flown recently by actual aircraft at similar altitudes that youāre interested in. Often, odd routes will be due to weather, ADIZ issues, etc. We will be releasing mapping functionality soon so you can see each option with NEXRAD weather.
Iām really not crazy (ok, maybe, but I pretend not to be). Even if those routes have actually been flown, they are still obviously bad routes. Who knows why people file really bad routings, but look at the second one, there is no way under any circumstances that that is a good route.
Furthermore, the link at the bottom (the KSAC-KMRY analysis) has the often flown routing which was not presented to me.
All Iām saying is, just because someone has flown a route doesnāt mean its a āgoodā route.
Hereās another observation on the routes that the flight planner gives: Some of the routes are impossible to fly based on the aircraftās equipment and altitude flown.
For example I planned a route from KPAO to KMYF in N26WG which is a Cessna 177RG /A. I selected flight levels 070 to 110. The three proposed routings were:
KPAO SJC SNS LAX KMYF
This one has a 225nm leg between the SNS and LAX VORs. Continuous reception of at least one station would be pretty iffy for a flight below 18000ā
KPAO SJC SXC OCN MZB KMYF
A 295nm leg between SJC and SXC VORs, same problem as above.
The flight planner does not suggest based on your input and equipment.
The suggested routes are based on previous flights that probably had GPS for the above flight. It would be up to you to review the suggested flights and select the one most appropriate for your equipment.
That would be a nice improvement if it would be possible to compare previous flights with similar equipment codes and suggest or filter out those routes when planning.
We do try to filter out routes that havenāt been assigned to aircraft above/below 17000 feet (depending on what you put in for altitude range), but if we donāt find anything that way weāll show you the routes all aircraft have received.
Weāve worked out and will soon implement a new scoring system to consider both the number of times a route has been used and the most recent time it was used to make the suggestions a little more sober.
One thing that seems like a useful feature would be the ability to add your own route or modify one of the suggested routes (I couldnāt figure out a way to do that currently). So right now in the event that none of the suggested routes are good then thereās no way to get any use out of the site.
I appreciate the idea of using routes that others have already filed but this seems complementary to allowing user-defined routes, not a replacement.
Agree the notion of scoring past popular routes seems plausable to offer some suggestions but much work remains.
A moment ago this system suggested either direct or **jet routes ** *below FL180 *which was also too near or over the WDC FRZ when planning a SR22 between 8,000 and 12,000 from BWI to BKW.
Update: a day later I see it has improved by suggesting several appropriate plans, including those I typically fly, and no longer the inappropriate jet routes plan for my range of altitudes lower than FL180.
Iād also like to enter my typical routes and those found in the published ATC preferred routings out of my home field and have them saved for future use.
