How ACARS measures your flight

What the numbers on your PIREP mean and where they come from, so you know what counts.

Flight phases

ACARS follows the flight from the gate: boarding, pushback, taxi, take-off, climb, cruise, descent, approach, landing, taxi-in and arrival at the gate.

A phase changes only once the aircraft has been in it for a few seconds, so a gust or a quick pitch change doesn't flip it back and forth.
The cruise starts when you hold a level for about a minute. A level you pass through while climbing isn't counted.
Once you start the descent for real, the flight stays in descent: a short level-off on the way down isn't a new cruise.

Landing rate and G-force

The landing rate is your vertical speed at the moment the wheels touch, taken from the simulator's own touchdown value where it gives one, otherwise from the samples just before touchdown.
G-force is read many times a second around touchdown, so a short spike isn't missed.
Touchdowns within 10 seconds of each other count as one landing with bounces.
The counted touchdown is your last landing. Staff can pick another one (for example the real landing, not a bounce) and the PIREP is scored again.

Fuel and times

Fuel used is measured from the start of the take-off roll to touchdown, so fuel burnt at the gate and on the ground doesn't count against you. The same figure is used for the finances and for the comparison with your SimBrief plan.
Block time runs from off-block to on-block. Taxi-out, air time and taxi-in are shown separately.
Time paused in the air is shown on the PIREP. Your airline decides whether it counts as flight time.

The approach and the runway

With the runway data installed, the PIREP shows:

Glide slope: your height against a 3° path to the runway you landed on, from 10 nm to about 200 ft, in dots as on an ILS (one dot is about 0.35°).
Lined up: how far left or right of the extended centreline you were over the last 10 nm.
Stable approach gates: speed, vertical speed, gear and flaps at the heights your airline sets.
Touchdown point: how far past the threshold you touched down. *Good* is inside the touchdown zone (up to 3,000 ft, or a third of the runway on a long runway); *early* is the first 500 ft, *short* before the threshold, *long* past the zone.
Flare: how much of your sink rate at 50 ft you took off before touchdown.
Take-off: the runway, where you lifted off, and your climb over the first minutes.

Flight checks

ACARS watches for handling faults (stall warning, overspeed, taxiing too fast...), procedures (beacon, lights, parking brake...) and integrity.

A check your simulator or aircraft can't report is shown as not reported and never counts against you.
Some add-on aircraft don't report their switches through the simulator's standard values. An aircraft profile tells ACARS which switches work and what the flap lever positions are called. If your aircraft has none, ACARS offers to record one after the flight (*Teach Vaeroly this aircraft*); Vaeroly checks it before every copy of ACARS uses it.
Some airlines judge the lights and switches only for aircraft with a verified profile. The PIREP then says whether they were judged.
Time acceleration is logged each time you change it. Your airline decides what it means: points per minute, a review, or the flight not counting. Some allow a short burst.
The crew centre also runs its own integrity checks on every PIREP. We don't publish how they work.

For what each check costs at your airline, open your airline's Scoring & rules page. What happens to a PIREP after it's filed is in What the PIREP statuses mean.