C408 not available for career missions

Bug Reporting Hub User Interface & Activities
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ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

The C408 is listed in game as “medium” cargo, but if you buy it, its never a valid aircraft for medium cargo missions. I.e. even if its at the airport, you can’t use it, and you can’t transfer it for missions even if its the closest plane.

If applicable, which aircraft is experiencing this issue:
C408 skycourier

[PC Only] Did you remove all your community mods/add-ons? If yes, are you still experiencing the issue?

No mods.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

Basically always, I was randomly able for fly 1 mission in it, and have owned if for about a week.

REPRODUCTION STEPS

In career mode. Have other medium cargo planes, buy a C408, and it will never be transferable for a mission. If you manually move it, it still won’t show as a valid option for the flight.

YOUR SETTINGS

Default install no mods

[PC Only] Are you using Developer Mode or have you made any changes to it?
Not in developer mode.

[PC, MSFS 2020 Only] Are you using DX11 or DX12?
N/A

[PC Only] What GPU (Graphics Card) do you use?
4090

[PC Only] What other relevant PC specs can you share?
12900k

MEDIA

Please add a screenshot or video of the issue occurring.

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]

:loudspeaker: For anyone who wants to contribute on this issue, Click on the button below to use this template:

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
•

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
•

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

1 Like
2

There are some medium cargo missions that allow it but not very many. It can be a pain in the butt to find one where you can use the Cessna 408.

It would be awesome if you could filter the visible missions so that it only showed missions of a specified type that can be flown with our desired aircraft.

Ex: Show only Cargo - Medium missions that allow the Cessna 408.

2 Likes
3

Do you have evidence of this from the last few days?

When I originally upgraded tothe Deluxe version of the sim about two weeks ago it was possible to use the 408 on all medium missions and a ton of non-freelance missions also used it by default.

A few days later I could finally afford the SkyCourier for my freelance company but then noticed that 0 missions were available for non-freelance and I was not allowed to use the plane I bought for the available medium missions.

If there are any I haven’t been able to find them in Europe where I’m located…

1 Like
4

I haven’t really done anything with Employer missions of late, but I can’t recall ever really seeing those missions using the Cessna 408. On the other hand, I’ve been having less trouble finding Freelance missions that can be flown with the Cessna 408 lately, however, last night I ran across one that would only allow the PC-12 or PC-24.

It certainly seems better than it used to be. Several weeks ago I couldn’t hardly find any that allowed the Cessna 408 at all.

5

Weird bug. Since unlocking the medium cargo specialization, and flying mostly in Europe, I never had trouble finding 408 employee missions nor have I ever found a freelance medium cargo mission that didn’t allow me to use my own Courier once I had bought one.

Maybe the problem is tied to starting career with the standard edition of the sim before upgrading to deluxe or above?
Basically, your map gets populated with standard airplane missions and then it takes time for those to get replaced with deluxe+ airplane capable mssions after the upgrade?

6

Sorry for the double post, but I can confirm the existence of the problem now!

Do you have the same issue if you follow the OP’s steps to reproduce it?
• Yes!

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• As long as the 408 was the only medium cargo airplane in my company, I only had compatible missions on the map and therefore didn’t encounter the issue.
But now that I have added a PC-12 to the hangar (on another continent) I find lots and lots of missions that can only be flown by medium cargo airplanes that are NOT the 408.
After a bit of poking around I found the problem seems to be the mission length. Medium cargo mission are generated with distances between 1000 and 1500 kilometers. But anything beyond 1100 kilometers is apparently deemed unflyable for the 408. Which doesn’t make all that much sense as its published ‘normal range’ is ~700km and therefore too short for all missions, while its ‘maximum/ferry range’ is ~1700km and therefore more than enough for all missions. (Not to mention as the airplane is in the sim right now, it can easily fly 2000km even.)
So while this problem is not strictly a bug, some adjustments to the mission generator, the airplane’s parameters and / or the map UI (to make it more clear what mission can be flown by what plane and why) still seem warranted to make the whole experience a lot less frustrating, particularly fo those of us who really like flying the 408.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

2 Likes
7

Yes it seems to be related to the mission “length” or range. Basically missions longer than 5-5.5h are not doable with the 408. So basically the fix is to generate more of those shorter missions. I found a bunch of shorter missions in Alaska, but they are hard to find elsewhere.

8

Good find!

I think the root issue here might be that the plane has incorrect specs within the sim. I noticed that the fuel estimation on the “manage aircraft” screen after selecting a mission is wildly off.

It seems to estimate that the plane burns fuel about twice as fast as it actually does, thus dramatically reducing the expected range.

9

Well, as far as I know the 408 should burn quite a bit more fuel than it does in the sim currently. But the whole implementation of the aircaft is a mess, really.

Look at this:

This is what the fuel & weight screen looks like in free flight.

1920×1200 115 KB

This is what the EFB says.
1920×1200 84.6 KB

And this is fuel & weight in career.
1920×1200 154 KB

EFB and free flight agree on the max fuel capacity at least, but all the other weight limits are different on every single screen! The max TOW in career is almost double that of the real plane for even! And who knows what numbers are in the actual flight model…

Let’s hope SU2 will bring some of the dearly needed fixes. At least the mission filtering system seems to be in development & testing already, according to the last developer stream…

10

I think the Sky Courier is one big bug!