A320 MCDU Flighplan entry: Circular route/round robin: unable to use same VOR twice on flight plan

[fokker100-70 0]

To whom it may concern

Aerosoft Professional Airbus A320.

 

Thank you very much for a beautiful product as this!! Marvelous!

 

I am seeking some guidance/help with entering a round trip (same origin and destination) in the F-Plan that uses that same VOR as exit point of SID and entry point of STAR. In this case it is PAL VOR (Sicily) using SID PAL5Q and STAR PAL3L, both Rwy25 at LICJ (Palermo).

 

The use case is a training flight with the same origin and destination. 

 

Steps followed are shown hereunder: 

 

MCDU3: Load / Fuel succesful followed by Load Instant.

LEFT MCDU INIT Page 1

Origin: LICJ Dest: LICJ (finds old flight plan and load that - file attached)

ALTN: LICT

IRS INIT: Done ok.

WIND: Wind uplink successful.

CI: 30

CRZ: FL270

Tropo and Temp entered.

See image: 

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LEFT MCDU INIT Page 2

ZFW/ZFWCG: ok

Block Fuel: Ok

See Image 2: 

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F-PLN page:

Change departure RWY from 07 to 25 and selected SID PAL5Q Rwy25 to PAL VOR

Changed arrival RWY from 07 to 25 and selected  LOC25-Z No Star, No Via. 

ROUTE MARON MABOX PAL as per flight plan route. So far so good.

Added LONDI PIVOP after MABOX.

See Image 3: 

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Then I try to change arrival and select expected STAR: PAL3L for ILS/LOC approach Z runway 25, No VIa, and all the intermediate waypoints (MARON MABOX LONDI PIVOP) disappear and the flight plan is reduced to just SID to PAL  then PAL shows PAL3L (in small font) and the STAR commences. 

See image 4: 

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I do not understand why all the waypoints were removed by the MCDU ????

 

Additional relevant information:

Airbus version: 1.3.1.0 

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Navigation database: Navigraph

AIRAC Cycle: 21May18Jun/20

FltSim: Prepar3D v4.5

FlightPlan: Exported from Simbrief

 

I must be doing something wrong! Would appreciate if someone could guide me.

 

Thanking you in advance for your kind support.

 

Kind regards

LICJLICJ01.flp

[fokker100-70 0]

Hi again,

 

Further to yesterday's post, I even tried redoing the steps without:

(1) loading LICJLICJ01.fpl as downloaded from Simbrief;

(2) Created another one via pero Company Route Editor and tried with that version of the flightplan;

(3) created flightplan directly in MCDU without loading saved flightplan.

 

In all three scenarios, the use of the same VOR as an exit point of the SID and the entry point of a STAR is impossible.

 

Would appreciate some help here.

 

Thanks in advance.

 

With kind regards

[fokker100-70 0]

Sorry but the earlier post should have read:

Further to yesterday's post, I even tried redoing the steps in two different ways:

(1)without loading LICJLICJ01.fpl as downloaded from Simbrief and created flightplan directly in MCDU without loading saved flightplan.;

(2) Created another one via pero Company Route Editor and tried with that version of the flightplan.

 

Apologies for the error.

[keenrw 59]

I have noticed this also, you cannot put the same waypoint/VOR in twice ....comes in handy when trying to manually input or edit a STAR /Route manually but at the moment you cannot do it as it wont let you.

[fokker100-70 0]

Thank you. Good to know that I am not the only one with this problem.

 

[Emi 5161]

What's happening here is a feature used during flightplan editing. If you insert the same waypoint twice in a flightplan the Airbus joins them up and removes anything in between.

 

If the same is supposed to happen during SID/STAR selection I don't know. I'm afraight right now there are not a lot of pilots flying who could give it a shot in the real deal to confirm or deny.
All I can tell is that from the FCOM's description it is correct that if the same waypoint is inserted twice anything in between is removed. However that part of the FCOM is probably to be seen in a route editing context. I'd say the only way to find out is to check it in the actual plane.

I myself can only speak for the 737 and I'd actually expect this behaviour for the same reason mentioned for the Airbus above.

[fokker100-70 0]

Thank you for your reply. In the meantime I have opened ticket with support. They have acknowledged the issue and will be investigating it, even with real pilots.

[fokker100-70 0]

Apologies for the delay in my reply. Many thanks for the tips. In fact what I did was to use PRS VOR (it's just a few nm's away) in the flight plan instead of PAL and entered the constraints as per STAR. Then once passed PAL VOR, entered STAR and voila'. It seems to work just fine. Thanks again.