Flight planning
- Plan your route
If you know your route, great, you can go straight to planning and weather to prep.
If you are looking for inspiration, try websites such as Flight Aware to see some real-world flights.
To plan your flight, there are numerous tools and websites out there, but I use the following websites:
skyvector - check airport details, weather, flight planning etc.
Flightsim Dispatch - real-world flight plans to choose from - for inspiration
SimBrief - great flight-planning tool, connected with and owned by Navigraph
Navigraph itself (requires paid subscription)
Some good tutorials can be found here:
The official Simbrief tutorial
SimBrief & Navigraph intro by OverKill Simulations
- Check the weather
Check the departure and arrival airport weather, using your own source of METAR (meteorological actual report) or TAF (terminal area forecast) information or one of the below recommended websites:
metar-taf - check airport details, weather, flight planning etc.
windy - great website and app for all type of meteorological phenomena
SIGMET terminology
SimBrief - in addition to flight planning, you can in SimBief see METAR and TAF weather in SimBrief, either while flight planning (little cloud icon above departure and destination airfield code fields) or in the Database/WX section of the website.
The upcoming Navigraph IFR update will show weather for airports within the user interface also.
- Weights & balance
This is already provided by SimBrief or youre aircrraaft's EFB .. but you can always do manual calculations as required.
Check weights from your SimBrief flightplan:
OEW + pax + payload = ZFW
ZFW + block fuel = TOW
Use the EFB in thee FBW A32NX or Fenix A320CEO for detailed loadsheet and W/B management. Details from this are entered into the MCDU and also used for take-off/landing performance calculations.
4. Cockpit set-up:
Flows and checklists:
I have my own simplified flows and checklist derived from real A320 pilots on YouTube and also a few airline SOP manuals. A few others are also avaialble on flightsim.to.
For the A32NX from FBW, you can refer to their comprehensive and well-written A320neo SOP (standard operating instructions) document that has the primary flows for CM1 (crew member 1) and CM2.