Flag/Remove Bad Routes and Suggest/Prioritize Good Routes

System users in both real life and the virtual community frequently file flight plan routes that do not conform to ATC requirements contained within ATC Letters of Agreement or Standard Operating Procedures. Regarding SimBrief, and specifically the “Suggested Routes” portion of the Dispatch dispatch system, many entries displayed in the suggested routes should be categorically removed for non-compliance with ATC needs.

Real-world ATC commonly issues pre-departure reroutes to aircraft that have filed an invalid or non-conformant flight plan. While real pilots are used to and proficient with receiving/applying these reroutes, it can be a source of frustration and difficulty for both virtual pilot and ATC to deal with a full route clearance amendment when the pilot had every reason to believe that a suggested route is a correct option.

Further, it is possible that while certain suggested routes are scraped from FlightAware and cited as justification to be a suggested route, the routes FlightAware displays may not be correct, as they might be amended by ATC prior to departure without it reflecting on the FlightAware. Below see an example of a reasonably common route, KORD-KDEN. While the example route may be valid in the sense that it conforms with a given AIRAC cycle and is legal to fly, it’s far from a “suggested route” for anything ATC would typically assign, let alone a proper preferred route. There are innumerable other examples of filed flight plans that simply would never be allowed to depart in the real world without potentially significant amendment.

With all that said, I am proposing a 2-piece improvement to the SimBrief “Suggested Routes” section.

1.) Ability to Flag or Remove Bad Routes
2.) Ability to Suggest or Prioritize Good Routes

Trying to reduce or entirely remove poor routes will be a benefit to the sim community as a whole. Especially so during event periods where the increased frequency and time/frustration cost of what would be otherwise unnecessary reroutes is exponentially more painful. It will reduce frustrations of ATC and pilots alike. It will also improve realism, especially where real-world ATC and pilot can have input as to actual-used flight plan routes.

I appreciate your consideration.


Hi,

In the flight you brought up (KORD-KDEN), that route comes up because you’re on an expired AIRAC which doesn’t have the new KDEN RNAV STARs. SimBrief’s FlightAware suggestions obviously work best when on the current AIRAC, since SimBrief tries not to suggest an invalid route by default.

There may be a system to flag or suggest routes in the future, but it might be a while. For now, you can always post route issues in the forum and I will do my best to update the database accordingly.

Best regards,

I’m keenly aware that the specific example above involves old cycle data. I tried to address that in my post but failed. However, the primary suggested route is still a far departure from what was normally flown even back then. Just a qualitative look at the flight plan doesn’t make much sense. Moreso though, it was intended as just one illustrative example of many issues seen.

I don’t want to see NaviGraph or SimBrief forums or inboxes inundated with route removal suggestions. There are effectively infinite city pairs to address, and infinitely more suggested routes attached to those pairs. However, a large number of airports, especially the largest and most frequented by simmers, have explicit requirements (and not just meaning SIDs and STARs) that make it relatively simple for those in the know to identify to flag bad routes.

I can appreciate the difficulties of integrating and implementing a route “QC” system, and SimBrief is a fantastic tool. I hope to see it filtered to some degree with human-in-the-loop input to enhance realism just that much more for sim pilots and controllers alike.

Thank you again for your consideration and time.

From SimBrief’s post I am reading that SimBrief has some internal method of suggesting valid routes over invalid routes - that’s wonderful news! I always assumed (I know, I know!) that SimBrief was pulling from RW routes (FlightAware, etc) but looking into the documentation I see that is not the case.

Thanks!!