OnCourse Software

Hello pilots.

As this is not a problem report of specific flight, there is no debug attached
I have decided to move my flying in USA and get more practice on flying in to giant airports with a lot of runways and more complicated approach procedures.
Almost all the time I am flying with SID/STAR ticked on and it always works good in Europe, but I see that things in USA are slightly different. At first, STARs can be very long. Once I had my STAR started at 120 miles before airport.
But what I have noticed, that many airports, even having complicated STARs they still give vectoring to the finals at some point.
As for example flying to KJFK: At CAMRN expect radar vectors to final approach fix in use. If using STAR function, it begins at SIE VOR. I am cleared at this point to finals on pilots discretion, but obviously, not vectored at CAMRN. So it is just better not to use STAR function, include STAR in to flight plan and I will get vectors to any runway at CAMRN and that would be close to real world procedures I guess. Cool.
But here is another more complicated example, that I cannot figure out, how to make it closer to real world procedures.
Flying to KATL: I cannot modify flight plan to include STAR in to it and have closer waypoints, as I don't know which runway I will be assigned to land until reaching CHPPR and it is separate routing for each runway. So I still need to fly with STAR function on to get to the last point of assigned runway, but obviously PF3 will not give me vectors for the final at that point.
But I was wondering if there is some trick, to make such kind of approaches more realistic as it is described in charts? STAR plus vectoring to finals?
I thought it would be great to have a hot key function for switching between STAR and vectoring? That would make things easier and more realistic, simply hit the key when you reach the point where you should get vectors in real life
But I guess it is not that easy to implement, as it would be already done.
So I was just wondering, what would be the other way, to bring such a flight closer to real world procedures as per charts?
Or "cleared to finals on pilots discretion" is our limit in here?

Thanks in advance!
Viktor.

Have a look at section 20.5 in the User Guide for some suggestions on how to set up STARs like this in the U.S. and Canada. The example given in that section is similar to this one.

For your flight (CHPPR1 arrival) I would suggest using MRCHH as the last waypoint in your PF3 flight plan, as it is common to all runways and is about 30 miles out. If you have included any waypoints closer than MRCHH in your flight plan, you should deactivate them on the PF3 waypoint page before the flight because you don't know which runway will be active. (You could instead use CHPPR as your last waypoint and it would work well also.) Do NOT check the STARs box on the SID/STAR page.

When you reach MRCHH (your last PF3 waypoint), PF3 will begin issuing vectors to the active runway. If you decide that you do not want vectors and want to fly the rest of the approach by hand or using your FMC, use hotkey 1 to request clearance at pilot's discretion and you will be on your own to fly to the final approach course for the assigned runway.

Thanks Dan,

Yep, it works very well, when it's a single arrival point for multiple runways, like in JFK.
But for arrivals with transitions to multiple runways, it's harder to set up.
Well, it is till possible, if you change designation of runways, and adjust weather to meet the conditions for landing on that specific runway, then the SID can be included in flight plan and waypoints assigned accordingly, but that is no where near to reality, as I think pilots ca not control the weather?
So as I have mentioned as an option before, would it be worth to ask for a future request to implement a hotkey to switch between SID/STAR and vectors option during flight? That would give more flexibility in the flight...