Hi fellow developers,
Is there a simple way to determine the flightphase of an aircraft - eg. Pre-departure vs in-flight vs landed.
Also - the actual departure time is presumably updated automatically?
There is not an actual landing time, right?
Thanks in advance.
/Stephen
I suggest using the combination of three functions:
The GetDistanceFromOrigin can be tricky, as it assumes the “active” waypoint on the route to be the closest to the aircraft position. This is adequate most of the time while the aircraft is airborne. But it can cause issues when the aircraft is still on ground, but is assigned a departure route which turns back towards the airport after some distance. The route will then be cut short although the aircraft has not departed yet, but the distance calculation will be based on the full trajectory assuming the aircraft has already flown this part. Such an aircraft could return distances of a few nautical miles although the aircraft is still on ground.
So your plugin might wrongly determine a flight as departed while it is still on ground. I suggest therefore to add additional checks, either with the mentioned GetGS or other parameters like the direct distance to the airport combined with an altitude limit.
In terms of trajectory calculation by ES, it would be great to improve the logic to prevent a shortcut to the closest point on the route while the aircraft is still considered on ground using the already provided speed filter from the general settings and possibly also an AGL limit.
Thanks Jonas,
I note the issue that you mention with wrongly assuming the next point is the closest. We see this while on downwind along the 22 (Charlie) STARS of EKCH where ES predicts the AC to be direct EKCH rather than still on the STAR.
Indeed this is a regular scenario when you vector aircraft close to an airport and then away from it agian. This is kind of the same case, but I assume an even more difficult one. Because how is ES supposed to know if this aircraft is on a downwind and what should be the next waypoint to use for route prediction?
Do you enter a heading in this case or does ES just shortcut the predicted route in any case?
We also have STARs going overhead the airport. But I think we managed to get these displayed an predicted correctly. But it is subject to some tweaking (change the route after the STAR so the prediction will not jump on the APCH too early), which is, as far as I can recall, mostly related to track changes between waypoints (of the prediction route).
The route before departure is under changing now. With the predicted points it is also hard to know what controllers should see the plane as notified. I will consider this issue too there.