I’ve noticed that flight level assignments in Europe are often inconsistent with the Semicircular Rule in Europe (ICAO/SERA). I planned a flight from LIRN to LGTS. Since it was an eastbound flight, the final flight level should have been odd, but instead I was assigned an even level (FL320). In Italy, the level was limited to FL180, but still even.
Diego Campioni
Countries where the major airways are oriented north/south (e.g., New Zealand; Italy; Portugal) have semicircular rules that define a North/South rather than an East/West track split.
Possibly also Greece?
In addition, the semicircular rule can be overridden on an airway-specific basis (which would be reflected in the navdata, for navdata formats that support airway flight level rule signaling). Generally speaking, Simbrief will respect those airway-specific rules (as well as country-specific north/south vs. east/west splits).
And sometimes even the Eurocontrol Route Availability Document will define a non-standard flight level rule for a specific “direct” or a series of them (that won’t be in the navdata and is, as far as I can tell, not easily machine-parseable either). Simbrief may get those wrong on occasion as, if I remember correctly, such rules need to manually be added to its database.
Regards,
Tim
