I’ve done a couple of extremely short flight plans as follows:
EGWU (RAF Northolt) to EGLL (London Heathrow)
Aircraft: C152
I set low altitude airways (IFR) but left everything else as standard. At the runway at EGWU I let the AI Pilot fly and all is well until the approach to EGLL starts to get set up. Thereupon, the aircraft starts a descent which looks okay at first, but you soon realise that it’s going to be a couple of miles short of the runway. The aircraft crashes well short of the runway eventually.
Does anyone know why this happening? I’ve been using the AI Pilot to do short and medium flights to stress test my PC and, for the most part, the AI Pilot has been pretty good at doing an entire flight.
I’m interested in why the plane crashes and does not land correctly.
The basics of an Autopilot is quit easy if you use a small Aircraft like the C172 or similar. I didn’t know that the C152 doesn’t have one. Just flown it one or two times.
I wanted to see how the C152 would do a flight today using live weather. We had a fair old storm going here in the UK with very heavy rain and gusty winds.
For the autopilot learning I will use the G1000 equipped C172. I have also installed the G1000 NXi from Marketplace.
I pressed the B button times but the pressure stayed at 2992 (or whatever the default is). I’m not sure why it didn’t change as the pressure is usually very low in a storm.
The mod 152 (JP Logistic) has A/P. Why you would want to use AI Pilot? Aren’t you the one who wants “to learn about flying or piloting”? If you want to use either one you will never get the skill required to fully enjoy the sim.
I’ve been stress-testing my PC using multi-hour flights as it’s an old PC that I’ve refurbished recently. I wanted to make sure it didn’t crash due to overheating or anything similar. I’m learning how to use the autopilot now and then will progress over time to more manual control.
Using the AI Pilot also allowed me to learn some of the camera controls and where switches and buttons in the cockpit are. It’s a feature of MSFS 2020 which has been useful to me.
I had one flight that the AI copilot almost completed successfully. The approach was flown perfectly but ATC had the aircraft go-around. The AI copilot flew the missed approach perfectly and followed ATC vectors back to the airport. The next landing attempt was waved off by ATC and the AI copilot flew the missed approach perfectly. However, something went wrong with the 3rd approach attempt and the aircraft crashed short of the runway. Overall, I was impressed with the AI copilot performance. It wasn’t perfect but neither am I. Personally, after a long flight I would be worn out flying three landing attempts and two missed approaches and probably would have crashed trying to land.
We know the AI copilot, the Garmin, the FMS, ATC, AI traffic aren’t perfect. As pilots we have to recognize when automation breaks down that we turn it off and recover manually. When the autopilot doesn’t work correctly and starts spinning the aircraft towards the ground, we know to disconnect the AP and perform spin recovery. (You do know how to recover from a spin, right?)
Why are you not using an Autopilot instead of the buggy AI Pilot?