Aviation

Yesterday I posted about a small utility that parses and explains ARINC 424 records. I have updated it.

For each field, the tool now cites the specific tables in the ARINC 424 specification that describe that field. The field-content explanations are also more detailed, so you can spend less time flipping between the parsed output and the printed standard. Here is an example for an Airport SID/STAR/Approach primary record:

This is still a work in progress. Not all record types are supported yet; I am filling those in as I need them.

N.B. An enhanced version is now available, with specification table references and more detailed field explanations. 2026-08-03.

The ARINC 424 specification is the universally accepted standard for encoding aeronautical navigation data. Databases that follow it store that data in fixed-length, 132-character records. I created a utility that parses a single ARINC 424 record and prints the fields along with column numbers and plain-language explanations. The Python arinc424 module does the heavy lifting; I provide a wrapper around it, plus the logic that maps fields to the column numbers used in the official specification.

As a Challenger 650 captain, I fly routes between North America and Europe with some frequency. Dealing with the interconversion of imperial and metric units is a challenge; so I create a Lua script that runs in the X-Plane FlyWithLua plugin.

Once installed, the script allows you to enter the required trip fuel, current onboard fuel, fuel density and metric vs imperial units and outputs the desired fuel uplift. You can also select to take 10%, 15%, 20% extra fuel. This is a feature that I added because SimBrief seems to underestimate my fuel burn.