Trouble with .PLN files from MSFS2024

[MSFS 2024] Bug Reports
1

Version: 1.2.8.0

Frequency: Consistently

Severity: High

Context: flight plan files (*.PLN)

Bug description: The flight plan files saved by MSFS 2024 have changed compared to the legacy format. The cruise altitude is wrong (for example, 1.3 million feet when flying from Munich to Rome), the departure and destination airports are not in the Waypoint List and all Waypoints are missing the geographical location data (WorldPosition). This makes it impossible to use these files in apps that want to do GIS related processing.

Repro steps: Generate a flight plan on the EFB and save it to disk

2

A more complete test would be:

  1. Load a PLN file.
  2. See what data from that file you can now find via any sim API
  3. Save a PLN file
  4. See what data from the original PLN made it through to the saved PLN.

We rely heavily on PLN files for shared gliding tasks but we have found the MSFS2024 PLN support too weak to be usable.

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3

This is true: there is a new format specification available in the SDK docs here: EFB Flight Plan XML (PLN File) Properties

That definitely sounds like either a PLN serializer bug or a bug with the EFB planner app itself.

They are now in their own elements, to separate them from the enroute segment of the plan, as in a proper ICAO standards flight plan.

Waypoints that are navigational data facilities will not include positions any longer in the new format. The issue with including positions is that these locations can shift over time, and thus create a problem in which the data can therefore be bad or in conflict with itself (the file indicates a fixed facility but in a different location than it currently is in the navdata), and it isn’t clear the intention of the PLN file.

As such, only custom lat/lon waypoints will include this WorldPosition element. If you need the locations of navigational facilities, you should look them up with the JS or SimConnect facility API (or otherwise reconcile them with your own nav database if that’s how the program works) to get their current positions.

Thanks,
Matt

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