I thought I would get the AI/Co-pilot to fly the plane so it would leave me free to explore all the views and admire the graphics, but the AI isn’t actually that intelligent at best it seems very erratic, often struggling to control the plane, on one occasion completely stuffing up the landing, is there a way to improve the co-pilot?
Ha, well mine did a take off.. I was thinking to myself ‘might wanna pull back a bit more on the stick than that mate’, low and behold.. the wheels clipped some trees and that was the end of that..had a good laugh though, nice to know I was correct in my thinking haha
The A.I. Co-Pilot is not very good with landings. He/She can manage most take-offs, and almost every flight, but landings often seem to be too much for them.
So, what I’ve found is that at the world map when you select your Departure and Arrival points click on specific runway points, not on the name of the airports. Seems that the A.I. Co-Pilot needs to know exactly where he/she is intended to land (I think this is because if you give them a specific runway point they then set up their approach correctly instead of just aiming at the airport and hoping for the best).
For me, over protracted testing, this method of flight planning has improved the odds of a successful landing to around 8/10 (from about 4/10). So still not perfect, but much better.
Once you have told the A.I. Co-Pilot to take control (preferably from the very start of the flight whilst still on the ground before take-off), DO NOT INTERFERE WITH THE FLIGHT CONTROLS. If you do, your A.I. Co-Pilot will most likely get confused and forget the flight plan. Your plane might also go into a tailspin. If you stay ‘hands-off’ for the entire flight the odds suggest, based on my research, that you will most probably see a successful landing right up to and including a taxi to stop. It’s not 100% guaranteed, but it’s more likely by far.
If Asobo could fix this nonsense it would make life a lot more enjoyable and far less risky for us virtual passengers. I don’t think this will ever be high on their list of priorities, which is a shame. Since I’ve started talking about how to use the A.I. Co-Pilot to fly yourself around the world in MSFS 2020 I’ve seen a lot of interest from folks. Perhaps some enterprising 3rd party developer can spot a gap in the market there for a handy paid DLC - ‘MSFS 2020: Passenger Experience Mod’ or something. My money is ready and waiting.
Thanks for the reply, I will give what you say a try, is there a way to select a view from a passenger seat on a plane too that would be quite cool and at least that way wouldn’t be tempted to fiddle with the controls.
Another thing I have noticed co-pilot always overspeed when flying jets and still randomly stuffing up landings often having go around due to missed approach or even crashing the plane, and on one occasion crashing on take off,
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Yep - I’m afraid the A.I. Co-Pilot almost always seems to go into final approach either too high, too low, or too fast, or at the wrong angle, or often some combination of all. Along with the A.I. Co-Pilot’s inability to plan flights to take into account the height of terrain (so crashing into the sides of mountains is, sadly, quite common on A.I. controlled flights), this makes for some truly disappointing results from the A.I.
I had hoped for far better. My fear now is that Asobo will never return to this issue and never make any effort to fix the A.I. Co-Pilot. We’ll be stuck with this broken nonsense while they go about fixing all the aircraft and scenery and producing lucrative DLC. A real shame, if it happens. I just can’t see fixing this being that high on their list of priorities.
One of the quiet pleasures of this sim would be to know you can give your A.I. Co-Pilot a flight plan and then sit back and take in the journey while the A.I. handles everything, without any fear of it all ending in disaster.
I have also notice on some occasions the co-pilot doesn’t always follow the flight plan often leading to very erratic turns, and when flying a 747 not being able to maintain the designated final cruising altitude leading to extremes of accent and descent which in real life would be vomit inducing. LOL
My only issue in this game is landing, due to not having any hardware, due to no hardware with buying being available to buy. So…I have resorted to doing everything but landings, when I get to within say 40 NM of airport I will let co pilot “Jimmy” take control and do the landings. This has worked flawlessly…til about 2 days ago…Now Jimmy does whatever the hell he wants, he wont do as ATC requests (altitude or speed wise) he never deploys full flaps for landings, and lately he has been coming in either several thousand feet too high or over 100 knots too fast, which obviously makes us miss approach. He will recognize that the approach is now missed and throttle back up, retract gear like he’s going to execute an go around, but then he just flies straight…FOREVER, literally never turning back around! After missed approach, I decided to just let him go, he went for 300 miles never turning around.
As to your suggestion of clicking on a specific runway on airport on map…isn’t selecting say “ILS runway19R” in the approaches doing the same thing without zooming in on the world map? If not, I’ll have to try that I guess cause I am having massive landing issues. Hell the blue approach “gate” ain’t even showing up for me now.
You say you doubt they fix the AI pilot. Way I see it, I don’t see how they could just let it go as is, they HAVE to know by now it’s a huge issue. They have to know they need to fix it, cause they have to know that not every player has or can even get yokes/sticks…I sure can’t! And landing on a keyboard is a 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% failure rate 
IDK, maybe it’s just me being optimistic but I’m really hoping and thinking it is actually kind of high on their massive to fix list.
He is only 12. Give him a chance
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Does that…ummm…does it…rustle your jimmies? Sorry…I will never get that chance again.
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Maybe they are just trying to get everyone to buy expensive controllers and flight yokes have some form of sponsorship deal with manufactures of them.
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