I’d always understood company routes to be a rather large database with multiple routings used as required for weather and ATC. I’ve also understood them to be a tool in the bag, not the bag of tools itself. Sort of a quick and dirty way to shave time for the dispatcher and the pilot when conditions afford it.
The tools I’ve been looking at all surround the Route Database. One of the biggest hurdles I always saw in the past was the inability to verify routes after each AIRAC cycle automatically, something that PFPX does. Now, how often and how many become invalid every 56 days I wouldn’t know off hand. I know the creation phase would be somewhat time-consuming, but I know the KMCI originating routes that shipped with PFPX are all still valid having been created in 2013 (except for two to Europe).
I’ve never been completely familiar with the when and how of company routes, other than knowing most transport category aircraft have had the functionality for a few decades. I’m not even sure if real-world operators are even still bothering with the system. I have a feeling, and you would know better on this, that company routes databases likely are more utilized on domestic operations where there’s a finite number of routing changes between pairs, especially short routes. For KMCI-KMDW, FlightAware, for instance, shows 8 different routes used in the last week, one that was used 51 times, seven of which were used only once, and of those seven used once, only one of which looks like a canned route “ROYAL9 TONCE ENNZO ENDEE4”. The rest utilized various RNAV fixes to start the route (e.g. BQS263022). The one used 51 times is already a default in the PFPX route database and is still valid, and that is “ROYAL9 ARENZ DCT IRK ENDEE4”.
FlightAware’s IFR Route Analyzer would be a quick and dirty way to create routes between pairs as it sorts them by most used. In playing with it, I just enter in the airports in their fields then copy and paste the route from FlighAware. It automatically names them when you save (KMCIKDFW01, KMCIKDFW02, etc).
I’ve just always seen it as a touch of realism (provided real-world airlines still bother with it). I’m just not sure, like you, if it would be too much headache for the benefit. The initial creation could at least be sped up if we had enough people with PFPX who could just take a chunk of the data as the files are saved per route, not as one database file.
