Don't get too tangled up in trying to find some 'optimum'. This is
instructive: do a manual calculation of what you consider might be
three or four 'likely best' routes. When you get done cranking the
numbers, you'll likely find not an important difference in your
several results. It's that old thing when we learned calculus --
nothing very interesting happens near a maxima or minima.


If, on the other hand, you discover big differences between what you
considered to be two paths that you expected to be about the same,
(and you're sure the analysis is correct), you need to sharpen your
instincts (and that also would render moot all I've said earlier).

Blanche wrote:
Peter wrote:

"Andrew Sarangan" wrote

Most of the software out there will compute a flight based on the
user's route, time of departure and altitude. This is a fairly
straight forward task which could be done without a computer, as has
been the case for decades.

What I am looking for is the reverse. Given a destination, aircraft
type and a window of travel time (which could be a couple of days),
the software should come up with the best altitude, route and time of
departure. It should consider forecasted winds aloft, frontal
positions, icing potentials, turbulence and thunderstorms. The user
should be able to attach numeric weights to indicate the level of
importance to each factor. In other words, it should be a minimization
software considering a variety of decision matrix. At present I do
this by recomputing the flight for each scenario. This does get very
cumbersome, and is best done with an automated algorithm. If such a
thing exists, I would like to hear opinions.

Don't the airlines use this kind of tool already, for working out the
best routes?

Jeppesen do a product called Jetplanner, which I understand (from
someone working in an airline flight planning department) does this -
at least the winds aloft part of it. It is not priced for the GA
market, and my experience is that they cut off email communication
with you as soon as you ask how much it costs.

It uses the same database updates as Jeppview 3; this is evident from
the readme files on the JV3 CDs.

You need detailed performance data (versus altitude) for the aircraft;
something which is not available for most GA types.

It's called JetPlan and is the engine underneath OpsControl, which is
what you're thinking of (and what I was referring to earlier). And it
can handle all sorts of conditions. And as Peter pointed out, if you
have to ask, you can't afford it. Target market are small to medium
size carriers (large carriers usually have their own), charters
and business flight departments. There are also various military
organizations using it, or variations provided by Jepp.- Hide quoted text -

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