Flight Planning

The active plan

Open FPL from the main menu. Add Waypoint searches the database six ways — recent, nearest airports, flight-plan waypoints, user waypoints, by name, or by city — and the plan holds up to 300 waypoints. Touch any row for its action strip: Insert Before, Insert After, Remove, and Activate Leg. Destructive actions confirm first.

The two data columns are configurable — touch a column header to pick from thirteen fields, from leg distance and desired track to fuel remaining at waypoint, ETA, and METAR at waypoint. Cumulative fields draw cyan with a total row, per-leg fields white. Show Map collapses the inset map to show more rows; touching a waypoint row zooms the inset onto it.

Saved plans

Main Menu → Flight Plan List stores up to 50 named plans, each listed with total distance and en-route safe altitude. The editor is the same page you use for the active plan — rename, invert, edit graphically, load an approach, then Activate when it’s time to fly it.

Direct-To

Press the Direct-To key. The window’s four tabs — Waypoint, Flight Plan, Nearest, Recent — cover the usual cases in one or two taps, with a vicinity map and live bearing/distance to the candidate. Course To Waypoint takes a hand-dialed course instead of the direct bearing; a dialed course also makes the PFD’s CRS field editable, so you can trim it from the PFD afterwards. You can also fly Direct-To a raw map coordinate.

Graphical editing

Graphically Edit FPL (from the Map or FPL options) turns the map into an editor: touch a location for candidate waypoints, drag a leg to rubber-band a new waypoint into it, or create a user waypoint on the spot. Nothing touches the real plan until you save.

Approaches

Select Approach is available from the active plan, the saved-plan editor, the Direct-To window, and the airport’s waypoint page — same window everywhere, preloaded with the right airport.

Load puts the approach in the plan while you keep navigating to it; Activate starts flying it. Vectors-to-final extends the final approach course for you to intercept. From the E3X’s internal database an approach contributes its final segment — the FAF and MAP as plan rows with approach guidance between them. When an external GTN- or GNS-class navigator owns the plan, the E3X mirrors the navigator’s complete procedures — transitions, stepdowns, and the missed approach — see Panel Integration.

VNAV

The E3X flies the real unit’s single-profile VNAV: pick a reference waypoint from the route ahead, a target Altitude (MSL or above the waypoint), an offset (By a distance, before or after), and a descent rate. The page seeds sensible defaults — 500 fpm to 1000 ft above the waypoint, 3 nm before it — the moment you open it.

The solution drives the PFD’s VNAV chevron and required-vertical-speed cue, the top-of-descent countdown, and the AFCS VNAV mode. Capture VNAV Profile locks the descent path through your present position; Cancel VNAV Profile tears it down.

User waypoints

Create a user waypoint from any map selection (or inside the graphical editor): name it, pick a map symbol, add a comment, adjust the position. Main Menu → User Waypoints manages them, including proximity waypoints that draw an alert radius on the map.