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Flight Planning Services

Many services for flight planning provide ICAO options. I played around with a couple to see which ones are the most user friendly and caught errors. All of these services are free.

Gemini Sparkle

Key Takeaways:

  • DUATS is highlighted as the most user-friendly and effective free ICAO flight planning service, featuring an interface that closely matches FAA forms, helpful explanations, and robust error checking.
  • 1800wxbrief offers an ICAO flight plan form but is less user-friendly due to a lack of explanations for certain complex options, potentially confusing pilots.
  • FLTPLAN.com, while useful for other aviation functions, is found to be less suitable for ICAO flight planning because of its fragmented data entry process for aircraft equipment codes.
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Many services for flight planning provide ICAO options. I played around with a couple to see which ones are the most user friendly and caught errors. All of these services are free.

DUATS—This is my favorite ICAO flight planning and filing service. To navigate to the ICAO flight plan area, select “Flight Planning,” “File a Flight Plan,” then “ICAO.” The form closely matches the FAA From 7233-4. Drop down menus make selections easy and clicking a question mark provides an explanation of the item to help completing the form. A drop down menu allows selection of GNSS augmentation (WAAS) and automatically adds the correct notation to the remarks section. Error checking prevents entry of equipment codes without associated remarks. Interestingly, it doesn’t check LPV approach capability with having a GNSS. Otherwise, DUATS is a user-friendly interface for getting used to ICAO FPs.

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