How to figure out how long a flight should be?

[crewdog]

Hi all,

Pardon the FNG question. I've been trying to set up flights between different airports and a "round robin" flight where an aircraft takes off then returns to the airport where it started. I put in what I thought ere reasonable flight times but the aircraft usually flys a lot longer.

Any ideas??

TIA

[dave3cu]

Not sure what you mean by 'round robin'.

All ai flight plans are 'round robin' and, regardless of how many scheduled stops there are along the way, must be scheduled to return to the originating airport within the specified 'repeat period'.

As for 'flight times'. Unless you overide the arrival time (@ prefix in TTools) the compiler calculates the 'arrival time' based on distance and the cruise speed entered in the 'aircraft.txt' file. The 'calculated' arrival time may be different than what you entered. Also arrival times are generally 'in the airspace', and depending on weather and traffic, landing time can take 15 minutes or more.

What sim and what program are you using (TTools, AIFP, ??)

Dave