Hi,
First, thank you again for the work you’ve put into the SimBrief routes editor. Our team has actively used the system to contribute 1000+ manually verified routes to the database, and while the current tools are functional, the process remains extremely time-consuming for large-scale contributors like us.
We fully understand that these changes can’t happen overnight, but we’d like to advocate for future updates that would drastically improve efficiency for teams managing hundreds of routes. The main issue is the bug with the persistent search limitations, even when narrowing down the search too much the system still returns the error:
“Your search matched too many routes, please narrow your search…”.
If I may suggest some quality of life improvements:
- Bulk Operations (Add/Edit/Delete)
The current system requires editing routes one-by-one which is impractical for large-scale updates (e.g., airway changes, altitude restrictions). Key features needed:
- Bulk selection (checkboxes) to edit/delete multiple routes at once.
- Bulk import/export via CSV to update routes offline and re-upload.
- Batch editing for fields like preferred status, altitude restrictions, or airway replacements.
- Route Grouping
A “route group” feature could allow:
Saving one route string for multiple nearby airports (e.g., airports like OMDB/OMSJ/OMDW).
- Save & Manage Multiple Route Drafts
When creating routes, users often need to compare variations. A “Save Draft” or “Multi-Route Workspace” would let users store and organize pending routes before final submission.
- Miscellaneous
- For event routes, adding recurring date/time slots would reduce manual re-entry.
- Time based route prioritization for airports with multiple routes.
- Ability to add comment and or know the contributor who edited a particular segment, we at VATSIM Middle East and North Africa would benefit from it as we currently rely on this spreadsheet which is manually updated.
- Route version control & history to track changes to routes with a revision history.
Even incremental progress would save us dozens of hours per AIRAC cycle. These changes would also incentivize more contributors to enrich the database, as the current manual process discourages smaller teams.
We’d be happy to beta-test or provide detailed feedback if helpful! Thanks again for considering these ideas.
Best regards,
Mubarak/VATMENA