Preffered Routing

[Aaron Flodin 878523]

Is there any way that we would be able to run all of the Flight plans through "the computer". At least thats thats the term i hear every time I ask one of our real world controllers about routing changes. It seems, especially when its busy that I am constantly having to reroute aircraft, change flight plans ect. Now i realize that real world controllers must also do this but chances are they arent having to look up an entire routing by hand. For instance, Here is a typical flight plan i would get from a pilot that is not familiar with the TEC routing system of the SoCal area. Our little example is a flight from San Diego Lindbergh field to Santa Monica.

 

SAN.PEBLE3.SXC.SMO

FL240

 

And it ends up being

 

MZB293R.SLI148R.SLI.V459.DARTS

10,000

 

 

Now I understand that most pilots arent going to want to fly all that so for the most part i will try and coordinate direct routing as soon as they are airborne, I just need to have them cleared that way so the other staffed sectors know what to expect.

 

 

 

All of this to say, If i have an aircraft departing JAX or LAX going to KND, I have no idea how to make the arriving controllers job easier. Would it be at all possible to run the VATSIM flightplans through the SIMROUTES Database? Of course we could have the system check for the "NO DP" remark in the flightplan and jut change the routing to the nearest possible route without the STAR/DP's. If there was not a prefered route between 2 locations then "the computer" would leave the plan as is. Again, I have no idea of the feasability of this idea, I am not a VATSIM Network team member nor do i play one on TV....

 

 

Discuss...

[Jeff Clark]

Aaron...

 

You're not the first person to think of the idea, and IMHO, I'd also enjoy seeing such a system, but I'm not sure how feasible it is.

 

You're right when you say that real-world controllers are not responsible for knowing all of the different preferred routings in their ARTCC (there's simply too many to learn), and IMHO it's not a good idea to require controllers to know that if the wind at at KORD is out of the west, then your plane departing SAN must be on this particular Jet route - so such a system would be a great help to keeping things realistic without requiring our controllers to learn TOO much.

 

Part of the problem is that many of the preferred routings you describe are contingent on things like time of day (for noise abatement routings like the REDEYE arrival into KLAX), and runway configuration (like the change of STAR into KOAK when they change configuration).

 

This means that any automated system would have to first know the rules about when to [Mod - Happy Thoughts]ign which route (which just made the system more complicated), and also be aware of things like the current weather on the ground and/or anything else used to determine which stars to use. Of course this is all technically possible, it's just an extra level of complexity.

 

In real life, interestingly enough, the real-world computer system doesn't even know all the possible routes/configurations. The re-routing is done on an ARTCC by ARTCC basis. When a flight plan is first filed with the "home" ARTCC, it scans the route for certain predesignated fix-pairs which it knows are commonly rerouted. In your example, it would look for SAN and SMO, and then check the route to make sure it was the TEC routing. If not, when the strip is printed, the TEC route is printed in red ink on the strip (or surrounded by '+' symbols), to indicate to the Clearance Delivery controller at the originating tower that the flight plan must be re-routed via the new route. All other controllers looking at the flight plan -[Mod - Happy Thoughts]ume- that the new route is issued unless otherwise told by Clearance.

 

Each center's computer doesn't always know about all the other center's preferred routings, and often you get a scenario where flights coming in from another center need to be rerouted by the first controller in the new ARTCC. For this reason, the most realistic place to accomplish what you're talking about would have been, IMHO, ASRC - by somehow putting the fix-pair and reroute information into the sector file, and notifying the ARTCC controller that the route needs to be changed. Similarly, the controller who first [Mod - Happy Thoughts]igns a squawk code to a flight plan using ASRC could be notified that a reroute is required, again by ASRC consulting a preferred route database built into the sector file.

 

This is however, obviously up to the programmers of our systems, and not for me to say who could do it, because this is all someone else's volunteer time, and would probably not be an easy project.

 

Still, an interesting idea, and if we're to try to be more realistic, another direction we might want to try to go in as a group.

 

Jeff Clark

[Aaron Flodin 878523]

I had not thought of that before Mr.Clark, some excellent suggestions