Accuracy of STARS/SIDS in Navigation

    Has anyone compared the standard arrivals (STARs) and departures (SIDs) to the actual arrivals/departures for airports. For example, flying out of Palm Springs towards LAX in the A321 using a departure available in the Navigation menu sends me into the mountains west of Palm Springs. I've noticed the same on some arrivals, where the waypoint altitudes shown would fly me into mountains on a night approach. Maybe I'm misunderstanding...?

    The database in Aerofly is old so pick procedures that best resemble the current ones published and available on-line. The U.S. information is really easy to access.

    Using Cath1 or Trm6 in Aerofly you are supposed to enter the hold at the Palm Springs or Thermal VOR and climb in the hold until you are high enough to clear any terrain in the path of your route by at least a thousand feet. Look at the information in SkyVector dot com when you click or tap at the airport symbol.
    It wouldn’t be unexpected to actively plan your departure from an airport nestled in a steep valley taking into account the height of relevant mountains. This is all part of the fun in simulating an interesting flight.

    For an arrival follow the procedure in the SkyVector STAR or the RNAV (RNP) Y 31L and select the nearest arrival in Aerofly or if necessary make up your own approximation using the information from SkyVector.
    The waypoint BALDI and the arrival SBONO1in Aerofly is sort of reasonable if you don’t want to select or make up a better one. Using ‘none’ as an arrival and selecting the approach R31LY gives a really excellent arrival route from the west/south west which is very faithful to the current procedure.


    Here is a departure taken from SkyVector, give it a good read and make sense out of the directions. You can see on the top left MINIMUM CROSSING ALTITUDES showing that for Los Angeles you would fly away from Palm Springs VOR with the course 260 set on the VOR dial or nav display and pass the high ground at an altitude of at least 11,600 feet. The airway V16-370 can be seen on the SkyVector map. Use the world vfr and also look at the other map options.

    Thanks for the detailed instructions. I was wondering how current the Aerofly database is; some of the departures look strange - looping on themselves. I'm trying to learn learn a complete flight plan, from cold/dark start to programming the FMS (or whatever Airbus calls it).

    Understood, the big loop out from the VORTAC (a combined VOR and a military TACAN) is to give time for the plane to climb, a jet would probably have got up to the required height by the time it had returned to the VOR, if not then a racetrack pattern right turn outbound on 124 degrees and back in again on 304 degrees would allow the required height to be gained and the mountains to be well cleared.

    The FMC’s fix function can help with many procedures for instance in the 737 a FMC ‘fix’ entered as FIX name PSP and brg/dist as 104/ and next page entered as FIX name TRM and brg/dist 322/ will display that outbound waypoint EMRUD which is not in the Aerofly database but is defined on the Departure page.



    The crossed fix lines indicate the location of EMRUD.

    The 304 degree track inbound to the VOR is also shown, it just needed the next brg/dist line on the PSP fix page to be entered as 124/ (the fixes always need the bearing away from the beacon).

    The FMC display also shows that the required height should be reached on the first return to the VOR (unfortunately the Aerofly route cannot take the VOR name entered twice so a nearby spot is entered)