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.