Tim,

I am coming back after sime time and see this feature attracted some interest from the others...

My points were the following:

1) I usually do not change the route - just the times. And as I always re-write the times calculated by SD (round up to 5 min and add some margin to allow for little deviations) I am basically re-writing a big part of the flight plan.

2) I also have to fill in every time some of the aircraft supplementary specifications like emergency equipment and my phone number in the remarks...

What might be the solution?

ad 1) Let the flight plan to be saved within SkyDemon flightplanning package (and/or to customer area accessible from the web page) - I can imagine three buttons there: Submit, Cancel, Save (the Save button would not save it on the disk but would close the flight plan dialog which would then be saved together with other data within the flightplanning package) - for later editing and filing.

ad 2) In the aircraft section, add a tab with the supplementary information. This info would then be inserted directly into the flight plan like the other data (immatriculation, type...).

How about that?

Milan

OK, yes perhaps I'm not fully au fait with just how much is auto generated, next time around I'll see if I can pull out specifics that would add value. It may in fact be fine as it is....



Ian

Given that most of that information is automatically filled in my SkyDemon when the flightplan is generated, I'm struggling to understand the big benefit in being able to save and restore a prepared flightplan. If there's an underlying problem that could be solved, I'd rather solve that.

A key change will probably be the expected off-block time and potentially routing information, this may change for a number of reasons and will become firmer as the flight draws near. It would be good if the plan picked up changes automatically when referencing the revised route, minor changes may be to ancilliary data i.e. someone has found a strobe or liferaft they're now bringing along or have hired at the last minute, captains name & contact may change etc



Ian

When recalling a saved flightplan, would you expect it to be updated to reflect any changes to the route you've made in the meantime? Which fields should be updated if so? How would SkyDemon know that the flightplan necessarily represents the route loaded at the time the flightplan was loaded?

I think a flightplan 'save' feature must have the ability to be edited before submitting, that's really the whole point i.e do some work up front and then fine tune and submit when you're 'green for go'.



Ian

I think both work equally well for different people!



a) would be great for someone who doesn't carry their laptop with them - you could stroll up to any computer at your destination and file your return flight plan.



b) would be great for anyone who does carry their computer with them



Given that a) would work universally, and b) excludes some users, logic suggests that if you were to implement only one option, it should be a)?



Having said that, if you can't edit the flight plan before resubmitting it, then a) may be of limited utility.



So you need to do both

So, next to the "Submit Plan" button there could be another button called "Save for Later" or similar. This could then do one of two things:

a) save the flightplan to the customer area, so that it could be filed at the click of a button later from any browser, in the same way that you can cancel/close flightplans now. The plan would not be re-loadable for editing in Plan/Web.

b) save the flightplan to disk, so that it could be reloaded back into Plan/Web and then filed later from there.

Which sounds preferable and why?

Moi aussi



Al

and me.



Ian