While Flightplan allows you to change the aircraft name for any flight, there are many settings that may not be correct from one aircraft to another. Typically, changing from a “more complex” aircraft to a “less complex” aircraft (for example from an A320neo to a Cessna Skyhawk) will not have any noticable change when loading the flight plan in MSFS after changing the aircraft. Although switching from jet aircraft to propeller aircraft or from an aircraft with a single engine versus multiple engines can cause the aircraft to start “cold and dark”.
Flightplan preserves ALL settings in a flight plan, but only the settings displayed within the flight plan application can be modified. Commercial jet aircraft in particular have many, many settings related to aircraft systems and engine parameters that are simply not relevant to a light propeller aircraft, so MSFS will generally ignore the settings that don't make sense for the aircraft. But if settings are missing that it needs to initialize the aircraft, it will default to "off". So while you might save a flight plan with a single engine propeller aircraft and later change it to a commercial jet in Flightplan, the engine parameters for the prop engine will be incorrect for a turbofan jet so the engine(s) may be shut down when the flight plan loads.
If you want to be certain that particular aircraft systems/settings are initialized when the flight plan loads in MSFS, use MSFS World Map to save the flight plan with your desired aircraft, then open it in Flightplan. You can modify the route, ATC settings, fuel loads, radio frequecies, etc. in Flightplan and it will save your changes AND preserve all of the engine, propeller, avionics, etc. settings that were saved by MSFS. You can then save multiple copies of the flight plan with any route you choose and the aircraft settings will remain the same in each. Since there is a virtually infinite combination of parameters to support every possible aircraft that exists (or may exist in the future), Flightplan does not change any of the aircraft specific parameters, but it does preserve them when saving other types of changes (route, ATC, etc.).
Check out the How To videos on our YouTube channel for more information https://youtube.com/@simflightplan
Flightplan is a Google Maps flight planning add-on for use with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. Flightplan can be used to create and share your own flight plans using an interactive Google Maps drag-and-drop interface complete with terrain elevations, landmarks, streetviews, etc. Click on the interactive map to drop a pin at any location on earth, plus edit your aircraft and flight plan settings before you get in the cockpit.
Download Flightplan for Flight Simulator for free now! Google Maps API subscription is included free for 2 weeks.
Flightplan is always free to use for editing and modifying flight plans, a Google Maps API subscription is required to continue using the map features. Software updates and upgrades are free for life.
Note: Each PC can be registered to only 1 user, so please make sure you are using the same PC you run Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 on when you open Flightplan for the first time.