Setting up Schedules

[ATAvCEO]

Hi All,

New here and love the software. I am setting up a new VA and I am having a small issue that I am hoping someone can direct me to the right avenues to get my situation resolved.

When I go into the Schedules area for flights it asks me the 2 following things:

1)Arrival Time:

2)Flight Time:

Now I have been all over these forums searching for help on these 2 things and cannot for the life of me find anything. What I am looking for is a way to determine how long the flights from Dep ICAO to Arr ICAO without having to go into FS9 as there will be many schedules and would be very time consuming to do it that way with alt+tabbing out of the sim from getting the data to entering the data into phpvms. So say I want to setup a flight schedule From KDFW to KBWI to depart at 00:01. How would I find out what the time is for arrival? My theory is if I knew how long the flight would take then I can estimate the time of arrival. But it is a matter of getting the Flight times/

So my question is is there a utility I can download and enter the info in to get these times or is there a website I can go to to do the same? I did run across one topic that suggested a site (can't remember the site) but I didn't see where I could get the info needed.

Thank you for your time and understanding and look forward to using this great software to it's capacity.

[mattsmith]

I use vroute!

[Alemaobaiano]

I find FS Flight Calculator by Dave Westbury to be a very useful little tool for planning flight times, it's free, small and works offline. It doesn't give routes but you do have a choice of aircraft for the flight times.

Search for fsfc165.zip over at Avsim.

TTFN

[ATAvCEO]

Thanks for your replies, very much appreciated. I will look into both of them.

Again thank you.

[Jeff]

I use www.flightaware.com or the real airlines' website schedules to get all information needed.

[ATAvCEO]

Hi Jeff,

Yup that's the site I saw the other day but could not find it today. Thanks for the link again. Very Much appreciated.

[Jeff]

No problem, If you need any help scheduling just ask. I'm currently scheduling 10 airlines at the moment for my site.

[Alemaobaiano]

I don't know where your VA is based, so this might not work for you.

In Brazil the civil aviation department maintains a list of regular flights for each airline, and these lists are available for download in csv format. The lists can then be quickly converted into the phpvms template layout and uploaded in bulk. This is great if you are simulating a RW airline and can save a lot of time over adding flights individually.

It doesn't work as well if your VA isn't based on a RW airline, or for charter flights, and your local civil aviation authority might not make such data available, but it can be a quick way of getting schedules online. I used this method at a previous VA to add E-Jet routes, and it took less than 20 minutes in total to add over 400 flights.

TTFN

[ATAvCEO]

Hi Alemaobaiano,

Thanks for the info. Actually I am doing a VA based off a VA which has shut down a few years back due to bankruptcy so I don't think that info would be available for me.

Again thank you for the info.

[Parkho]

Hi Alemaobaiano,

Thanks for the info. Actually I am doing a VA based off a VA which has shut down a few years back due to bankruptcy so I don't think that info would be available for me.

Again thank you for the info.

Also, if you hit the calculate distance link when adding the schedules it gives you a direct vor to vor distance then assume that any medium or heavy type aircraft have about 470 - 480 kts total average speed(T/O - Cruising - Landing). Now divide that distance by 475 and you'll get an approximate cruising flight duration then add 30 minutes for T/O and Lndg and you'll have an estimated flight duration otherwise there is no way you can get the exact time for your flights everything is approximate.