IFR Flying in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 launched last fall and is the sim that we all hoped for. While we’re all used to too-good-to-be-true video game trailers that never quite materialize in real-life game play, MSFS 2020 actually looks like its awesome trailers. MSFS 2020 isn’t perfect - many of its aircraft systems lack the sophistication and polish of their X-Plane counterparts - but it does offer the entire world modeled with photo-real weather for you to explore.
MOSTLY UNNECESSARY DISCLAIMER: I’m just some guy playing a video game, and the info below is for flight sim use only. If you want real-world aviation advice, talk to a real-world Certified Flight Instructor.
In real life, aspiring pilots start with their Private Pilot License certification. In the United States, you need a minimum of 35 hours of flight time followed by a check ride to get it. It’s quite expensive. You’ll need to rent an airplane and pay a flight instructor for each of those hours. With rentals starting at $200/hour, the rentals alone are $200/hour x 35 hours = $7000. But, don’t let this discourage you. This is a high cost/short duration activity. We’re used to glossing over the cost of our extracurricular activities because they are low cost/long duration activities. For example, I took karate lessons for fifteen years. At $50 per month, I spent $9000 on karate lessons. But it was spread over fifteen years, not six months.
Pilots first learn to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules). This is the same way you drive your car, looking through your windshield to figure out where to go and only occasionally glancing at your dashboard to make sure you’re not speeding. You may have a GPS in your car, but you’re not using it to keep your car on the road. If a blinding, torrential downpour rolled in, you’d slow down and pull over.
Most pilots stop there. VFR flying is no-hassle. Much like having a driver’s license where you don’t need anyone’s permission to hop in your car and go someplace, you can generally hop in your plane, fly someplace, change your mind mid-route and go someplace else, all without talking to a soul. You don’t even need to file a flight plan. The only exception to this is when passing through airspaces (typically near larger airports) where air traffic controllers manage traffic.
In exchange for this freedom, you have limitations. You cannot fly through a cloud or even come near to one and you need several miles of visibility. This is because you’re flying by eyeballs, and when you can’t see it’s as illegal as driving your car with your eyes closed. If you’re a weekend aviator looking forward to a hundred-dollar cheeseburger, your hopes may be dashed by low clouds or fog.
Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) is the next step. When flying IFR, you are flying by instruments, not eyeballs. You are flying a precise set of rules and routes that keep you from crashing into terrain. That’s not enough, though. You also need to not crash into other pilots. For that, you need an air traffic controller watching you on radar. You’ve probably flown on commercial jets many times is bad weather. Commercial jets always fly IFR and can mostly ignore clouds, rain, and fog. Imagine if you could only fly commercial on sunny days.
The trade-off of this new superpower is a lot more preparation and rules. You’ll need to file a flight plan, get it approved by ATC, stick to it, and talk to the ATC the entire way.
VFR map for arrival to San Jose. The map shows things you look for with your eyeballs, like mountains, towers, roads, and power lines.
IFR map for arrival at San Jose. The maps shows airways, navigational waypoints, and navigational frequencies.
IFR plate for landing at San Jose using runway 30L. There are precise waypoints and altitudes to hit at specific distances from the runway. For this procedure, you need a GPS with RNAV capability.
In IFR maps, someone has worked out the safe altitudes and flight paths between two points. On the map above, the airway labeled V107 (to the left of the Los Angeles postage stamp) connects the waypoints GUYBE and SADDE. The 5000 number above the V107 tag indicates that the minimum enroute altitude (MEA) is 5000 feet above sea level. If you fly an altitude of 5000 or higher along this segment, you are guaranteed VOR reception and you will not hit terrain. The 10 number below V107 indicates this segment is 10 nautical miles long. Because the airway line is bolded, it is legally flyable. If it were not bolded, it would be for reference only.
Usually, the airport itself is not along a flyable airway. Even if it were, it would be below the minimum airway altitude. That means that when you take-off or land IFR at an airport, you need someway to get off the airway and safely navigate to the airport. The simplest is radar vectors from ATC. They will verbally guide you to where you need to be. If people are always getting vectored from the same waypoint and ATC is always sending them along the same paths, then the airport may just say “Alright, this is the standard way that planes arrive when coming from this waypoint.” They’ll then publish it as a Standard Terminal Arrival Procedure (STAR).
One of the STARs for San Jose. It covers standard arrivals for three different directions that planes may arrive, called transitions. Planes arriving from the north at Red Bluff VOR at the top of the map will use the Red Bluff transition for the BRINY TWO arrival.
Similarly, if planes are always vectored along the same paths when departing, the airport may publish a Standard Instrument Departure (SID) procedure.
Burbank’s VAN NUYS THREE SID. There are instructions for each runway and what direction you intend to fly. If you are departing to the northwest along to top left corner of the map, where the Avenal VOR is located, ATC may say something like “Cleared IFR via the Van Nuys Three departure, Avenal transition…”
The arrival just gets you to the airport. You still need a way to land. In flight terms, this is called the approach. The airport will likely also have published approaches. Usually there are multiple options to accommodate the wide range of technologies on aircraft.
ILS (instrument landing system) approach for runway 30L at San Jose. You will need to arrive at a specific waypoint and a specific altitude to begin it (this point is called the initial approach fix - in this case it is KLIDE waypoint at 4000 feet, which has the letters IAF, short for initial approach fix, on the chart). For an ILS landing, your navigation equipment is picking up a signal from the runway that guides your plane to the runway. You need to intercept the signal at a specific location, called the final approach fix (in this case HIVAK waypoint at 2700 feet, marked by a treasure-map-like X on the chart). From that point, if you have an autopilot with vertical navigation capabilities, your plane will fly itself down to the runway, “riding the beam”. Even if you don't have an autopilot, the ILS signal will give you horizontal and vertical guidance on your instruments, allowing you to hand fly the beam.
So, your IFR flight may look like:
File your flight plan. After starting up your plane, contact Clearance Delivery at the airport and get your flight plan approved. Note they may change any element of it as needed.
On departure, fly a SID (Standard Instrument Departure) procedure
The SID will transition to the enroute portion of your flight
The enroute portion of your flight plan will transition to a STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival) procedure
The STAR will transition to an IAF (initial approach fix). ATC will probably get you from the STAR to the IAF via radar vectors.
Once at the IAF, you will fly the approach procedure to land
Not every airport has published SIDS and STARS, and if an airport does have one it’s really up to ATC whether they send you on it. They might just send you direct via radar vectors to your transition, for example, if traffic is light.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, to its credit, has a nice graphical flight planning tool for selecting IFR routes, SIDS, STARS, and and approaches. It easily lets you toggle through all of the procedures and visually see how you’ll be flying
Planning an IFR departure from Seattle. The SID is the yellow line. The one selected, which takes me far to the west, doesn’t make sense for a south flight to Portland, so I would keep toggling through SIDs until I found one designed for a southern departure. The enroute portion of the flight is the blue line.
What’s nice about the visual flight planner is that MSFS uploads it all into your plane’s GPS. The planner isn’t perfect - if there are multiple transitions available for a departure it takes its best guess, sometimes flying you in crazy loops - but overall its pretty good. ATC will give you instructions based upon it, although the game fudges ATC vectoring near airports by having your GPS send you direct to initial fixes. If you’re completely overwhelmed by the choices, you can just set it to automatic and the game will make the flight plan for you.
For a very detailed tutorial on IFR flight planning, check out my YouTube video for my flight from Syracuse to Teterboro:
To see an overview of some of the tools, such as Navigraph charts, you can use for IFR flights in MSFS, see my video Comparing Navigraph and Foreflight in MSFS:
I’ve done a couple of IFR flights now, ranging from light general aviation aircraft like the Diamond DA40 all the way up to airliners like the Airbus A320. It’s really fun, and I feel like I’ve learned something with each flight. Check out a few my flights on YouTube:
While you’re here, if you enjoy sci-fi stories where exploring the stars is a central theme, why not check out my series, Hayden’s World, available on Amazon and Audible? If you’re like me and you enjoy classic sci-fi adventure and exploration, you’ll enjoy it.