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Route Correction

intermediate
📍 Route: EGLL → MID → BOGNA → LFPG (via L612)⏱ ~3 minutes📊 10 steps🎓 Flight Plans & Routing

You typed the wrong destination. Every pilot has. The skill being practised is not avoiding the mistake — it is catching it and clearing it out cleanly.

What this scenario covers

Entering a city pair is a two-part field, and a mistyped or mis-heard destination propagates instantly: the FMGS builds a flight plan to the wrong airport, and every prediction it makes afterwards is internally consistent and completely wrong. The correction is to overwrite the field, which the A320 accepts, and then verify that the flight plan downstream actually rebuilt.

The scenario deliberately opens with the wrong entry in place so that the exercise is the recovery, not the typing. Note that the step wants the specific corrected entry: the trainer will accept other plausible strings into the field, and tells you when it has done so without advancing.

Route map for Route Correction
The EGLL → LFPG route this scenario programs.

How it applies in flight ops

Reroutes are routine. ATC changes a destination for weather or a diversion, the company changes a tail assignment, or the crew simply mis-hears — and the fix is the same each time: change the field, then re-verify the whole plan rather than assuming the box did it for you.

The airline discipline here is the cross-check. One pilot enters, the other confirms against the OFP or the clearance before anything is executed, precisely because a well-formed wrong entry looks exactly like a well-formed right one on the screen.

Start this scenario

Opens the SimTuts A320 MCDU trainer with “Route Correction” already running, so you can walk through it step-by-step on the simulated keypad.

Open trainer →

Step-by-step: Route Correction

  1. You need to fly to Paris CDG (LFPG), but let's see what happens with an error. Type EGLL/EDDF and press 1R. That's Frankfurt, the wrong airport!
  2. Enter your flight number BAW304. Type BAW304 and press 3L.
  3. Wait — EDDF is Frankfurt, not Paris! You need LFPG. Correct the route by typing EGLL/LFPG and pressing 1R again. The MCDU will overwrite the old FROM/TO.
  4. Good catch! Now set cost index to 35. Type 35 and press 5L.
  5. Set cruise flight level FL230. Type FL230 and press 6L.
  6. Navigate to F-PLN to verify your route shows EGLL and LFPG (not EDDF).
  7. The route is right now: EGLL, a discontinuity, LFPG. Start filling the gap with the Midhurst VOR, where Heathrow's Paris traffic joins the airways: type MID and press 2L, next to the discontinuity.
  8. Insert airway L612 from MID. Type L612 and press 2L (next to MID) to open the AIRWAYS page.
  9. On the AIRWAYS page, L612 runs from MID to BOGNA. Enter BOGNA as the TO waypoint: type BOGNA and press 1R.
  10. Now press 6R (INSERT*) to splice L612 into the route. BOGNA drops in after MID. The rest of the way to Paris (direct HARDY, then M605 and UM605 to BIBAX) goes in the same way; the London to Paris scenario builds all of it.

What to take away

  • A wrong destination produces a perfectly consistent, perfectly wrong flight plan.
  • Overwriting the field is the fix — but verifying the rebuilt route is the job.
  • The FMGS validates format, not intent.
  • Cross-check against the OFP or the clearance, not against what you meant to type.

The rest of Flight Plans & Routing

Background reading

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