jailer

You can make some "educated" guesses based on the annual reports of certain airlines. For example, Southwest (w/ mixed fleet of classics and NG) had operating costs excl fuel in 2015 of 8.61 cents per ASM, 4.54 of which was attributable to salaries, benefits, etc. If you assume a breakdown of 75% fixed salary and 25% variable (no idea if this is accurate), you'd have fixed operating cost excl fuel of 7.475 cents per ASM and variable costs of 1.135 cents per ASM. With an average stage length of 750 miles, 2 hour duration and approximately 140 seats, you get fixed cost per flight of $7850 and $600 per hour. (Then again, I know very little about airline economics so this could be completely wrong.)

I've been watching a lot of 737 cl videos on youtube, and it seems quite a few times I've seen pilots use the RA DH and brief during the approach briefing that it was for (I don't remember exact phrasing) but either situational awareness or advisory purposes only. Is this a company SOP thing, bad habit, or just quirk to that flight crew? It seems like it's handy. Perhaps +50 from the indicated AGL for safety factor? I just like hearing "minimums" but that's just because I think it's cool.

Absolutely. (And I've reported my share, including recently. ) It's just that sometimes I'm in the mood where I just want to get a flight done with no possible mishaps. There's been a marked improvement from the initial release, no doubt.

While it may be more realistic to input the departure runway and arrival from the get-go, the source of 99% of my issues with the FMS are when changing the arrival route or dep/arr runways. Until this can be safely done without messing up the legs -- or worse, a Gizmo soft crash -- I think it's better to forgo VNAV and E/D calculations. After all, the PROG page is still a WIP too, so you're not really missing out on much, such as fuel predictions, etc. Much safer to leave it TBD and inputting later than having it crash and not being able to input waypoints, go direct-to, etc.

Are there chocks and I've overlooked them?! Or are you just referring to real life on this one?

I would add to this list that shouldn't the parking brake be set? It's not on turnaround state.

What is the appeal of the -400? I don't see much difference aside from MTOW, but I'm genuinely curious.

Jan, I had reported an issue when changing any constraints before and you had asked me if I could reproduce it for you, but now I see that the thread has been moved to "solved" and is locked. I made a video that illustrates the issue. If you skip to the 2:30 mark, you'll see that there is an altitude constraint of 13000A at EASEL; however, there is a 16000 constraint at JOCKE a few waypoints later. If the EASEL waypoint constraint is deleted, the descent path immediate jumps until EASEL is crossed, at which point the descent path goes back to normal. This is not correct because the 13000A should basically be ignored as it is redundant with a higher constraint further down the legs. (I understand this is low priority, real men don't use VNAV, etc. etc., but I did promise to reproduce so here you go.)

Accept marketing offers or no updates for you, son!

I'm afraid I don't have that. I'd consider buying TOPCAT myself if someone put together a usable profile. You could probably start with the NGX version and tweak it, but without the program, I'm not sure how involved it would be.

This should work: http://forum.aerosoft.com/index.php?/files/file/2816-pfpx-boeing-737cl-performance-profiles-pack/

Seems like the generators are still off. The generator switch has three settings: off, on and reset. Make sure you're moving it all the way to the third (reset) setting. It will automatically flip back to on.

I'm really excited about this product, but judging from all the confusion it seems you have your work cut out for you marketing it.

For what it's worth, I made this checklist based on the principle that less is more. It just covers critical items and is not an exhaustive flow list. The rest of the flow items I do from memory. Saab 340A Checklist.pdf

I'm a bit confused by the climb profile of this airplane. It would seem to me that the "low speed" climb should have a higher rate of climb than a "high speed" climb. This is consistent with the performance charts included in the package. For example, the chart shows that for 20000 lb FL 250, ISA conditions, 15 minutes at LOW and 18 minutes at HIGH. Am I missing something? In any case, I'm getting nowhere near the time or distance values indicated in ISA conditions at max climb power. I've tried RPM at 1250-1330 as indicated on the chart, as well as leaving it at the condition levers at MAX, all without any noticeable change. It's very confusing. I can accept that most real life trips would not be at/near the service ceiling, but I would expect a study level sim to match the calculated performance, so just wondering if I'm doing something wrong here. (I apologize in advance if it's the improper etiquette to revive this thread, but I only recently got this plane and it didn't make sense to start a new one.)

I consider myself lucky that I'm coming to this project very, very late in the game. I do recall hearing about it a year or two ago and thinking the classic was rubbish because of some bad experiences riding on Southwest, but I've totally fallen in love with it thanks to the videos. I read the Continental flight manual over the course of the past week and I found myself saying from time to time, "Oh, Jan mentioned that issue in the last video." I can see how some people are frothing at the mouth now, but I'm happy to wait... a little bit longer.

He was able to type pretty fast, in my opinion. You are free to put your keyboard on the floor under your desk and have your wife seated next to you complain about changes to the pension plan, if that's the type of realism you're looking to achieve.

You hit one key at a time on a keyboard-- that is, except when you read a post like this. Kidding; couldn't resist. I'm not aware of any limitation on a CDU only allowing only one finger to be used. Yes, you have to wait for the response before typing the next in the sequence.. this could presumably be programmed into the feature as well. Anyway, my point was merely that a keyboard is closer to the real thing with the tactile response and ergonomics. It's hardly a deal breaker though.

This discussion is getting a bit carried away, but these analogies are far off the mark. In terms of ergonomics, a keyboard with a tactile feel and the ability to hit different buttons in rapid succession is actually closer to the reality than using a mouse to click one button on a screen after another. If you want to argue that the benefits are outweighed by programming time involved, fine. But using "realism" to justify omitting a feature seems to stretch credibility.