Faster way to importing flight plans

[ark4diusz 0]

Hello, 

 

First of all, I would like to thank you  @pellelil for the outstanding program. I think this software is so underrated and I think many flight simmers do not know that such incredible software exist. Maybe advertise via FlightSim Reddit? Just a suggestion 

 

While I appreciate pre imported flight plans, I would like to have all flight plans imported between 2008 - 2021 from the AIG: https://alpha-india.net/aigfiles/files/Flightplans/ 

 

For now I try to import the flight plans one by one but it is very very time consuming (using "import AIFP flightplan" option)

 

Is there any way to import all flight plans from the AIG database in "bulk"? If I use "Download AIG flightplans" I have error and nothing appears 

 

I have one additional questions - does flightplans from different years from AIG database consist all airlines and routes for each years?

 

Best,

Arek

[pellelil 59]

Thanks for the kind words Arek.

 

Regarding import of flight-plans I can't offer batch/bulk import. The (AI) flight-plan file-format is not 100% aimed at how I use the data within Flightplan-Visualizer (FV). Hence when you import a flight-plan you might see a warning, and you are suggested to look over how it actually imported, as there might be things that needs to be fixed. For instance FV will try to detect which airline is servicing these flights. In most cases FV will detect the correct airline, but in some cases it might not (in some cases the airline might not exists within FV's internal data-base, so it has to be added first, or it might exists with another ICAO-code and/or name). Likewise it will try to detect which aircraft are servicing the flights, and it does a very good job in this aspect, but again in some cases it might not. Likewise FV will try to detect which airports are used to service the flights, and again in most cases it does a good job, but it some cases it does not get it 100%. This all comes down to the data-files AIG is using now/have used in the past, and the data-files FV is using internally. There are differences in this files (e.g. AIG might use another ICAO-code for an airport than FV does). ICAO-codes are not fixed, they do change sometime. This is the reason Flight-plans needs to be imported one at a time, and you "need to" (or at least: "you should"), look at each import to see that it imported as it should.

 

You don't have to, but each time I import a flight-plan I pay attention to the names of the aircraft (repaints) in used by that airline. if the name of an aircraft contains "opb" or "opf" I use these information to set the carrier/operator for that airline. When the name contains "opb" it indicate the flights services by that airline is "operated by" another airline. E.g. an aircraft for a SAS (Scandinavian) flight-plan with "opb CityJet" in the name will indicate that SAS the the carrier, however CityJet is the operator. Likewise if the name in stead contains "opf" in the name it indicate that this aircraft is "operated for" the specified airline. Setting up the Carrier/Operator for the imported flight-plans is a manual process, hence another reason batch/bulk import is not possible.

 

When it comes to the old AIG Flight-plans (dating back to 2008) you might not be able to import then all, and even if you are its more important that you look over each import and verify that it imported correctly. I don't think I tried to import anything older than 2015 myself. However in the older flight-plans AIG was less consistent in the way they made these files, than they are today. I guess thise days their internal tools for building these flightplans, assist them much more and is one of the reasons these files are more consistent. The more consistent these files are, the better FV is at detecting the correct: airlines, aircraft and airports.

 

EDIT:

Regarding the download not working in FV it is because AIG have moved their flightplans to another server setup, and as of now they can't grant access to FV being able to download these. Hence you have to download them manually (outside of FV). But once downloaded you can import them (1 at a time).

 

AIG don't support flight-plans for ALL airlines, and they are not updated for each airline for each year. While I don't know their internal process for choosing which airlines to update each year. I guess it based on multiple factors. E.g. how easy is it to obtain the data needed to construct a flightplan, when was the last time a flightplan for this airline was made, and perhaps even personal choice of the person who generate the flightplans. Hence me as a Dane/Scandinavian I would perhaps be more interested to add a flightplan for a Danish/Scandinavian airline, or an airline with whom I had flown in real life. So I guess many factors are in play to affect for which airlines they create flightplans- and how often these gets updated.

 

But since their flightplan are used for AI traffic, another important factor is also for which aircraft do they have (AI/3D) models, and repains. The real-lift airline might have additional flights for aircraft for which there is no AI aircraft-models available, hence either they would have to omit this data from their AI flightplans of they would have to select a substitute aircraft (model).