IVAO Belgium

Navigation data

When flying online, it’s important to have the most recent navigation data. Every 4 weeks, an updated AIRAC [1] becomes available.

An AIRAC is some kind of database that contains all airports, airways and intersections around the world. All changes in the previous 4 weeks are put in the new AIRAC file. If you wonder if there are really such a lot of changes, just look e.g. at Belgium. During some periods there are no changes but sometimes there are quite a lot (e.g. flight routes around Brussels airport).

You can download (Payware!) the new AIRAC-file via the website of Navdata (http://www.navdata.at/index.php). This site provides the data in a format compatible with a lot of Flight Simulator add-ons like FS Navigator, PMDG 737NG, Level-D 767-300… The 4 week period is called an AIRAC-cycle and always starts on Tuesday. It is important to keep your data up-to-date. The homepage of Ricard Stefan also contains the SIDs and STARs for your FMC. You can download and install these separately but pay attention: even though the SIDs and STARs are in the FMC, you still need the paper charts of the airports you visit since these charts contain more information concerning all procedures, about height- and speed restrictions… not available via the FMC.

Routes

There are several ways to get a recent flight plan on IVAO.

Via IvAe

When you open IvAe, you can select the tab folder “Routes”. After filling in the departure and destination airport you need to click “Find routes”. If a route is available on IVAO, it will be shown immediately.

For the flight from Brussels (EBBR) to Schiphol (EHAM), we get the following result:

Departure = the airport where you take off

Destination = the airport where you will land

Altitude = the proposed flight height

SID = the departure route to use in Brussels

STAR = the arrival route to use in Schiphol

Type = the type of airway to use (L = low level)

The other data is more administrative like the creation or modified date etc. Our flight plan is quite short (actually just “HELEN”) but other plans can be quite extensive. As an example, the route from Brussels to Nice (LFMN) is shown below.

ROUSY UT27 GTQ UN852 MILPA UM730 MEDAM UM623 VEVAR

The first point on the plan is always the name of the departure SID (ROUSY), the last point the arrival STAR (here VEVAR). The other entries are the airways (UT27, UN852, UM730 and UM623) and intersections (GTQ, MILPA and MEDAM) to follow.

An airway can be compared to a highway; an intersection is the crossing of 2 or more airways.

Via the IVAO website 

The IVAO website offers the possibility to request a flight plan. The procedure is similar as described for IvAe. The route database can be found at:

http://www.ivao.aero/db/route/

Via a virtual airline

By becoming a member of a virtual airline like SN Brussels Airlines, JetAirFly and Thomas Cook… you get access to their database that contains the real life route flown by the airline they represent.

To become member of a virtual airline, you can select one from the list presented at the following page: http://www.ivao.be/pilot/va