Electronic Flight Planning...

Snaggletooth

Snaggletooth

Line Up and Wait
Joined
May 9, 2009
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Display name:
Dustin
Now that I have my Private Pilots License out of the way, I'm starting to look in to other options for Cross Country Flight Planning. I overheard a few Pilots talking about Electronic Flight Plans. One was an Airline Pilot saying that E-Flight Plans only take him 10mins to file. So if it will make my life easier, I thought it would be worth a look. So here are my Questions.

1. Whats a few good sites to use for filing E-Flight Plans? I know DUAT does them.

2. How do you close the E-Flight Plan?
 
www.fltplan.com is a very popular and highly functional one, not to mention free.
I would start there.
If he takes 10mins he is doing something wrong! (could be he is referring to a full briefing)

There I just tried one. 90 seconds.

I would close with FSS - radio, or telephone -- if a vfr plan as I presume you are discussing.
 
Last edited:
Thanks!

Ok, your still closing with FSS. I was unsure if there was something else you did with E-Flight Plans.
 
Snaggletooth said:
Thanks!
Ok, your still closing with FSS. I was unsure if there was something else you did with E-Flight Plans.
Click to expand...

Actually I am shooting my mouth off again, I can't recall the last time I filed a vfr plan...but I did say I would close with FSS. Lets hear from some who do file vfr.
 
You are in Bay City. I have never been there but have bad memories - lost a Dr. friend a few years back in bad wx....make sure you get on that ifr rating asap.
 
Snaggletooth said:
Thanks!

Ok, your still closing with FSS. I was unsure if there was something else you did with E-Flight Plans.
Click to expand...

At this time, there's no real difference between flight plans prepared and filed electronically and the "old fashioned" methods other than that using a computer actually makes things easier in most respects. The one negative aspect of electronic flight prep is that WRT weather and NOTAMS (especially NOTAMS), most electronic aids do a terrible job of sorting through the haystack of available info for the needles of useful stuff. For that reason I suggest you use both methods for a while when gathering data for a flight. What the automated planners do well is helping you choose a destination airport and select a flight path. Once you've tried one of these tools you'll never want to draw lines on sectionals laid out on the floor again.

There are two basic types of automated planners, ones that only work online and ones that are relatively self contained and run independently on your own computer. Lately the lines between these two types have become a bit blurred with several offerings that combine the best features of both. Online planners allow you to work from any computer that has fast internet access (dialup generally sucks with those because large amounts of graphical data needs to be transmitted) but online planners cannot do much of anything if you're not connected. Offline planners traditionally worked in a two-step process where step 1 is establishing the route and step 2 is gathering weather data (some of the online stuff also works this way) but the latest versions of many popular offline planners have integrated at least some of the weather data into the first step.

Some popular offline programs (there are others):

RMS "Flitesoft" www.rmstek.com

Jeppesen "FliteStar" http://tinyurl.com/flitestar1

Bernoulli "DestinationDirect" www.flightplan.comSeattle Avionics "Voyager" www.seattleavionics.com/Products.aspx

Online tools:

AOPA Online Flight Planner

FltPlan

DUATS Golden Eagle

...and several others. Have fun.
 
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