As this is a frequently asked question on our support mailbox, it is time for it to have its own article on the FAQ.

What is and what isn't supported in terms of flight planning in AirTrack and AirFMC.

AirTrack:
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AirTrack uses the X-Plane XPLMNavigation SDK (http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/docs/XPLMNavigation.html) to access, read and if possible write to the FMC engine.

This tends to work with most planes but doesn't always; why? because some third party planes have their own internal FMC systems (and with it route data) and they either don't expose their flight plan to X-Plane via the XPLMNavigation SDK or don't read from it. There are several third party planes that don't comply to this and there is nothing we can do except hope that they do one day.

There are also third party planes that only support read mode, i.e. the route data you enter in their FMC interface is populated to the XPLM data structures but the reverse i.e. if AirTrack writes to these data structures the planes won't take this into account. This is however better than nothing because the flight plans entered in the plane's own FMC will display correctly in AirTrack and its ND, they just cannot be written to.

If a third party plane totally doesn't work with AirTrack's FMC then there is still a way. At the cost of redundant work, you can make AirTrack work with its Flight Plan Data locally by going to the iDevice Settings app (not the settings page of AirTrack), scrolling down to AirTrack and enabling standalone mode for FMC Flight Plan. In this case AirTrack's flight plan will work independently from X-Plane, but if a user loads the exact same flight plan on both, then AirTrack will show pretty much what's being flown in the third party plane in its ND. Not ideal and extra work but it is the only thing we can do as the planes simply don't support sharing their flight plans.

Using an Air Account and the Route section of this website users can enter flight plans easily by just entering or copy-pasting the sequence of waypoints and airways, and then have them beamed down to AirTrack. This should make life easier and will allow you to load the same flight plan on multiple devices at a click without having to re-enter it. It will also save it for future use.

AirFMC
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AirFMC has a different mode of operation; instead of relying on the XPLMNavigation SDK, it simply acts as a skin to the plane being used providing it is supported; any key you press is sent to the plane's FMC as is and it is up to the plane to act on it. Anything the plane shows on its MCDU screen will be sent back to AirFMC and displayed as is.

This solves the problem for those planes where AirTrack doesn't support their FMC as users can still use AirFMC to create a flight plan. But the downside is that AirFMC doesn't work with all planes, only those supported, as each plane requires work to be done on the plugin to support its own data structures.

AirFMC and the default X-Plane FMC
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Up until recently AirFMC also supported planes in default FMC mode i.e. the FMC that was present in X-Plane 9 and 10 for most planes. Providing a similar interface it would take waypoints and enter them into the plane using the datarefs that allowed to control it. As it was the default it used the XPLMNavigation SDK so these planes worked with both AirTrack and AirFMC.

Laminar however started shipping XP with a new mode advanced type of FMC in most planes at some point in X-Plane 11. Unfortunately the datarefs that used to be available for the old FMC style are being phased out and the new ones required to display the new FMC are not there yet. As more and more planes are made to use this new system, they become unsupported. We're sorry for this but there is nothing we can do :( So while some planes in X-Plane 11 are still supported (because they still use the old style FMC), some newer ones are not.

We have contacted Laminar and are waiting for the new datarefs to be made available (more specifically the ones to read the new FMC screen lines) and were told they will come. So as soon as these are made available by Laminar, we'll make AirFMC support the new X-Plane FMC style and thus make it compatible with any plane that uses it.

Stay tuned for updates on this.

Fun flights,
The Haversine Team

We have just received an update from Laminar on making the contents of the MCDU available which won't be added yet to X-Plane 11 due to a limitation in development resources.

As it is essentially impossible to read or retrieve what's on the default FMC screen from X-Plane, we regret having to inform that this FMC type will not be supported after all.

For a list of supported planes and FMCs, see: http://haversine.com/airfmc

Sorry for this limitation as it's beyond our control,
Fun flights,
The Haversine Team

And as of 11.35 it seems Laminar has made the MCDU screen lines available via datarefs (https://developer.x-plane.com/article/datarefs-for-the-cdu-screen/), so we just updated the plugin to support the default type of FMC again based on these starting on version 5.3.

So the X-Plane default FMC support in AirFMC is back with X-Plane 11.35 and the Haversine Air plugin v5.3 or above.

The Haversine Team