Historical AIRAC for non-RNAV aircraft

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With the arrival of the JustFlight Fokker 28, many pilots prefer to fly this aircraft without the optional GNS530. The problem is that creating non-RNAV flight plan is really difficult (even not possible in some part of the world) due to missing VOR/NDB installations removed years after years.

The idea is to create an historical AIRAC before 2000, when VOR and NDB were starting to be removed. First AIRAC cycle was introduce in 1964, I hope these databases are carefully stock somewhere and accessible for Navigraph team :smile:

The only problem I see, it’s concerning the approach procedure. Because it’s impossible (I guess…) to found old approach charts for all airports, we still need to use the actual AIRAC to perform IFR approach/landing. So the actual database of ILS/VOR/DME/NDB of an airport is needed.

The solution to create this historical database, could be to merge all VORs/NDBs who have been dismantled before 2000 to the actual AIRAC cycles. With that we will be able to fly VOR to VOR more easily and still be able to perform IFR approach with the correct chart and frequencies.

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I would also love to see this. Maybe I am wrong, but since Navigraph was founded in 2003 and since they started releasing AIRAC Cycles for flight simulators only in 2014, as far as I understand, I think they don’t have access to an AIRAC Cycle before 2014.

I could be totally wrong but this is the only thing that would make sense to me.

Kind regards,

Dominik

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Hi guys,

While we see there is some interest in such historical data, this isn’t really feasible. We have published AIRAC data since 2006, but only since 2012 with our current data provider. So our oldest data is “only” 11 years old.

But even if we had older data somewhere in our archives, there are multiple hurdles to building something like this:

  • We don’t have charts matching the old data
  • Merging old and new data is a very complex task
  • Our infrastructure and apps only supports one AIRAC cycle to be published
  • We generally cannot publish old data as per agreements

We have noted your interest but I don’t see this will happen in the foreseeable future unfortunately.

Regards,

Stephen

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Stephen,

Poking at this a bit - could you do it if you could develop a business case? Old data would not need to be updated so it could be a one-time purchase priced at cost + reasonable profit. The addressable market is everyone who has purchased a BAe 146, Fokker F28, or any of a host of other historical aircraft with no or limited RNAV capability. Could you price it at a point where you capture enough of that market to break even?

In terms of what is needed and what is not absolutely needed:

  • Need Navdata for MSFS (and maybe other sims) for the aircraft’s VOR and NDB receivers to see, Navigraph Charts to power the procedurally generated enroute charts, and Simbrief for flight planning. That would cover most use cases for most people (and already be far better than nothing)
  • Don’t think we need many of the other data formats, such as FMS updates, since the target aircraft don’t have that
  • Not having terminal charts is a big shame but not an absolute showstopper IMO since they can sometimes be found with some effort (e.g., search for “Bertil Gullmar”…)
  • No need to try to merge old and new data; no idea how the users would try to use such merged data anyway
  • Cannot comment on the infrastructure issues obviously…
  • Would need a different data source or a one-time licensing deal for one particular old AIRAC cycle