When manually entering an alternate airfield and then generating the flight plan the alternate changes from that entered requiring it to be entered and run again.
Hi, I’m afraid I could not reproduce this.
Does it do this on all flights, or only a specific one? Did any other error messages appear when this happened?
Could you send some screenshots of your Flight Options before and after generating, showing the departure, arrival, and selected alternate?
Cheers,
I seem to have found the trigger for the changing ALTN field. When entering the flight planning information I start with entering the Flight information fields in a logical left to right sequence: Airline, Flight number, Depart, Arrive and my preferred alternate. I then go on to select the aircraft type. It is the result of this action of choosing the aircraft type, that can/may change the alternate from that which was initially entered.
In the first image you will see that I chose NZWN. Following the selection of the B737 MAX 8 it then automatically changed the alternate to NZAA. I am assuming that following entry of the aircraft type the program then looks at all the alternate criteria that has been selected in user preferences. It would be helpful that if an alertnate has been manually entered into the flight info area that it remain fixed there and not be dependent on whether or not an airframe has been selected.
So this is the expected behavior, not a bug.
When you select the aircraft type, SimBrief will evaluate the auto-calculated fields for the flight, the alternate being one of them. Suitable alternates depend on the aircrafts performance and alternate criteria.
If you enter an alternate before you select the aircraft, the alternate may update.
The fix is simply a small change to the workflow, selecting the aircraft first, then the route details.
Thanks Gordon. I wasn’t suggesting that it is a bug, more that the logic is odd.
A hard entry in any field should override an auto entry unless it exceeds a limitation. The logical flow sequence has already been determined by the layout. That is, start at the top and work down. The default Alternate field is AUTO, and that is fine if unsure of what airfield to use, or to simply let SB choose. However, if you do know what alternate you require then this should not change after entry (perhaps have a pop up advisory stating that the selected alternate does not comply with your selected restrictions).
If, as you mention, the airframe should be selected first, then why not have this section positioned above the flight info panel to maintain a logical top down flow? After all it is the airframe that determines the following flight planning parameters and requirements.
Certainly not a major, and I can live with it. It would simply further enhance an already exceptional product.
Cheers