Scheduling Daily Overnighters Without 50 Min Error |
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Soaranden
P1 Joined: 14 Feb 2009 Points: 627 |
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Posted: 15 Sep 2011 at 7:11am |
I was scheduling an overnight flight to be flown daily from EBBR in Brussels to ZBAA in Beijing, when I made a discovery. My first attempt at scheduling this daily flight (with an early-evening departure for the first leg) resulted in the following:
EBBR 18:25 ZBAA 10:06 ZBAA 13:33 EBBR 15:14 As you can see, the second leg was highlighted in red to indicate an error, and clicking on the highlighted line resulted in the dreaded error message, "The leg needs to start minimum 50 minutes after the previous leg end." As a result of the error message (and out of a strong desire to maintain the first leg of the flight as an overnight leg), I deleted both lines of the schedule, selected "Weekly" instead of "Daily," and began the process of writing a schedule for the whole week in order to avoid the 50 minute error. The first two lines of the weekly schedule looked somewhat like this: EBBR Sun/18:2 ZBAA Mon/10.0 ZBAA Mon/13:3 EBBR Mon/15.1 That's when I realized I had had a long day, the hour was late, and I didn't really feel like writing a schedule for the whole week, even though I wanted the flight to depart each and every evening from EBBR. So I decided to try a quick experiment. Under "Flight Plan repeats," I switched from "Weekly" back to "Daily." The result was this: EBBR 18:25 ZBAA 10:06 ZBAA 13:33 EBBR 15:14 THERE WAS NO ERROR AND NO 50 MINUTE ERROR MESSAGE! So to avoid the error when the first leg of a daily flight is an overnight leg, initially select "Weekly," write a single departure leg and a single return leg, then, select "Daily." Now I have done an overnighter, myself, telling you about this. Dan |
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supera380
Check-In Staff Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Points: 16 |
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Hey Dan,
Excellent information! a BIG THANKYOU and GREAT find! I had been struggling with this scheduling of overnight flights and logged a support ticket all to no avail. Your "quick switch" find is the solution! I find that if you start out with the intention of planning a daily overnight schedule you get the dreaded 50mins leg warning. Then if you go back in and edit the outbound leg to "Weekly", you will find that the return/inbound leg then displays the same day as the original outbound leg which causes that error. By selecting the correct inbound departure day (+1) then re-entering the time again fixes the timing issue. Then if you switch back to "Daily", the schedule is accepted without errors. It appears this "error" in the day is not shown unless you are switching between "Weekly" and "Daily" settings becasue the "Daily" option blanks out the day. I was able to re-program all my A380 Lufthansa flights which have a lot of "overnighters" using your method and everyone was successful! Thnaks for shedding some light on this. Much appreciated Regards Mark |
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Soaranden
P1 Joined: 14 Feb 2009 Points: 627 |
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Hi, Mark, I had read your earlier posting before I wrote my above posting. Since this is a problem that has affected anyone who has attempted to write a similar schedule since Traffic X was first released, I decided to post my solution in a separate posting so that everyone could read the title of the posting and be alerted to the fact that a workaround had been found. Part of the reason I tried my "experiment" was that I had noticed a number of default Traffic X flights that were free of errors even though those flights had schedules that were similar to my error-producing schedule. I knew there had to be some way to do it! I'm afraid I had taken the time and gone to the effort of writing complete weekly schedules for my own long-range Lufthansa flights (and for long-range flights of many other airlines, as well) in order to avoid the error. I should have experimented sooner! Dan |
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freddy
Chief Pilot Joined: 29 Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne, Aust Points: 1339 |
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This is indeed a great "find". Well done Soaranden.
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Soaranden
P1 Joined: 14 Feb 2009 Points: 627 |
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Hi, freddy, It occurred to me, yesterday, that you might be a person who would lose some time as a result of my posting my time-saving fix. I think the irony results from our enthusiasm for realistic AI traffic schedules. As with any hobby, there is a cost in time for enthusiasm...and you, I, and a lot of other people in this forum, are enthusiastic! Dan |
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Soaranden
P1 Joined: 14 Feb 2009 Points: 627 |
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I think I've found some FedEx flights that I need to reschedule as overnighters. (The screenshot was taken at the FedEx hub in Memphis, and every aircraft you see--including the two arrivals in the air--is a FedEx aircraft that is either arriving or waiting in line to depart).
Dan |
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freddy
Chief Pilot Joined: 29 Nov 2008 Location: Melbourne, Aust Points: 1339 |
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The cargo flights in my Australian skies in FSX, using Traffic X, do not strictly adhere to realism. I just haven't really bothered to try to get them accurate, instead preferring to simply schedule them to fly during the day with the passenger planes. However, without doing too much research, I believe that this may in fact be more realistic than I think, especially given the Sydney curfew. For example, when I am at these airports in real life, I often see one or two cargo planes taxiing and taking off in between the usual busyness of the passenger flights. So, I have been happy to leave things as they are and have FedEx, UPS, DHL and Australian Express (our own Australian cargo carrier) flying during the day. But ... with this new found Traffic X "trick" of yours, I might just revisit my thinking here and actually do some investigation in to the actual flight times of these cargo planes. For starters, I do know for a fact there is a cargo plane which lands at Melbourne airport every second night at 4:00am ... it wakes me up on a few occasions as it flies overhead on its approach (I live under the approach course to one of the Melbourne runways and planes are clearly visible during the day and night as they decend and navigate the approach - they are still fairly high up, but low enough to be reasonably loud - and in the middle of the night, when its pitch quiet, you can obviously hear them really well). So, in conclusion, I may now find myself diving in to some web pages and a few schedules here and there. I think I am happy for now, but your "trick" has planted the seed in my head. Give it time, and that seed may grow ... causing me to make a start on some more accurate scheduling for my cargo planes. What a fun hobby. Yes, you are right ... you, I, and a lot of other people in this forum, are indeed enthusiastic!
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supera380
Check-In Staff Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Points: 16 |
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Hi Guys,
Just a quick FYI... I heard back from Martyn in Tech Support since I sent him an update based on the info above and the support ticket I logged for this a few weeks back and he will pass the findings on to the developers. Of course no promises right now, but hopefully this will be fixed in a future update. Anyways just to let you know that it is "officially logged". Anyway for me it's a great workaround. The reason for pushing this was I have been dabbling in Frankfurt scenery design (now on v4) and I was trying to get the A380's coming in and out of Frankfurt at the right times. It's quite good to now see them lined up at the C gates as they do in real life and depart on schedule! Anyway, again a BIG thanks to Dan for persevering with this. Nice job. Cheers Mark P.S: Good luck with your Cargo flights!!
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