What is SimBrief?
SimBrief is a free, browser-based flight planning tool widely used in the flight simulation community. It generates realistic operational flight plans — including fuel figures, routing, weather briefings and dispatch documents — before a single engine is started.
How SimBrief Works
SimBrief has become the de facto standard for flight planning in the simulation community, and it’s easy to see why. Developed and maintained by Navigraph since its acquisition in 2021, it mirrors the kind of dispatch process used by real-world airlines, letting you build a complete flight package around your chosen aircraft, route and conditions — all for free.
Once you enter your departure and arrival airports, select an aircraft type and configure preferences like cost index, fuel policy and cruise altitude, SimBrief calculates everything you’d expect from a proper pre-flight: estimated fuel burn, step climbs, alternates, payload assumptions and top-of-descent points. The result is a full Operational Flight Plan (OFP), available in the formats used by real airline crews — Lido, Jeppesen, Air France and others.
What makes SimBrief particularly valuable in simulation is how deeply it integrates with popular add-ons. Aircraft like the FlyByWire A32NX, PMDG 737, Fenix A320 and iniBuilds A310 can pull your SimBrief plan directly into their flight management computers, automatically populating the route, fuel figures and performance data. That alone saves a significant amount of time and removes a lot of manual input errors.
SimBrief also draws on real-world weather and NOTAM data, so the route it produces reflects actual conditions rather than a theoretical ideal. The quality of the output depends on the accuracy of the airframe profile you’ve selected and the inputs you’ve provided — garbage in, garbage out still applies.
Key Considerations
- Always review the OFP before loading it into the aircraft — check that runways, SIDs, STARs and fuel reserves are appropriate for your specific aircraft and the current simulator conditions.
- Use the correct airframe profile for your aircraft variant. Fuel figures can differ noticeably between, say, an A320-214 and an A320-271N, and the wrong profile will skew everything downstream.
- SimBrief works closely with Navigraph Charts and tools like SimToolkitPro, making it the natural starting point for a complete pre-flight workflow.
- If you’re flying online on VATSIM or IVAO, a properly filed SimBrief plan makes it straightforward to submit your flight plan through the network before departure.
