OnCourse Software

Your Cruise Altituden the first page and the Flight Level Altitude on the second page should be the same...

At least for years I have always set them the same....

Ray Lunning

Flight level altitude is actually the altitude which you stop calling your altitude in thousands of feet and start calling them by flight levels instead, this is also called the transition altitude. The cruise level and flight level do not need to be the same.

I see what you are saying...I understand.

With all my flying here in the USA... Approach and Departure handle calls generally to 5000ft above the field elevation in the terminal area and then hand you over to Center.. In the Los Angeles area where I was based I would get center at 5000ft...
This of course is a problem if you make a flight plan from Denver where the field elevation is 5000+...

Since I was flying a Cessna T210, I rarely got above 15,000 ft... My experience was that ATC didn't start calling "Flight Level..." until 18,000...
This is not a hard rule and I am sure it varies with the aircraft, flight plan and areas within the USA...

Generally in the UK the transition altitude is 6000 feet, this is the altitude above which we would start using FL's, it varies all over Europe and can start as low as 3000 in some areas.

Andy: I see what you are saying...However I fly in the USA..I just checked my Jeppesen Manual...USA Airspace System chart US-7..

Flight Levels start at 18,000 MSL... This is something DM and I spent a lot of e-mails on...

On this side of the pond we have different rules...This should be noted when advising a user.. This is also something that should be noted in the PFE manual..(it may be)...

The question that was asked was if a centre altitude of 4500 feet would allow PFE to function correctly and I said yes it would be fine. Then you replied that the centre and flight level values in PF2000 must be the same, which is clearly wrong in this instance so I corrected you. There was no need for me to explain the different rules for different parts of the world to the OP regarding transition altitudes, all he wanted was a working flight plan and PFE.

Whew! I quit..