I keep running into the same issue in Career Mode, and it’s not rare - it happens regularly.
The mission generator creates scenarios that are simply not flyable.
For example, I’ve had missions where:
Departure is in normal conditions, but arrival ends up at an unlit or abandoned airfield at night
Jets like the PC-24 are assigned to extremely short runways (~1300 ft / 400 m)
Missions are generated in poor visibility without considering aircraft limitations
Inactive or non-existent airfields are used as normal destinations
The problem is not difficulty - it’s that these missions are physically impossible to complete.
You can’t take off from a runway that is too short
You can’t land a jet at night on an airfield with no lights
You can’t realistically operate in conditions the aircraft is not suited for
This leads to:
failed missions regardless of skill
broken career progression (especially VIP and Medevac)
having to abandon missions for reasons outside player control
All of this feels like the generator does not check basic compatibility between aircraft, airport, time, and conditions.
It’s especially noticeable when multiple factors combine, like night + no lighting + poor visibility - at that point the mission is simply dead on arrival.
This is not about making the game easier - it’s about preventing missions that should never exist in the first place.
Oh yes, you are not wrong. We have been living with this state of affairs for 1.5yrs. Updates to this mode are slow and when these will all be fixed is simply unknown - nobody tells us anything about this mode so I HOPE the next dev twitch stream will tell us more.
I originally tried to submit this as a Wishlist item, but it was rejected due to existing similar entries.
However, from what I’ve seen, those are quite surface-level and don’t really describe the full scope of the problem or how these issues are connected.
That’s why I decided to post it here in a more complete form - because in practice all of these factors combine into one core issue with mission generation.
This is exactly the kind of stuff I point to when users demand more/unlimited “freedom” in Career. You can’t have it both ways - every degree of freedom creates opportunities for these kinds of situations. In my opinion, the best compromise is to simultaneously have the freedom to pick mismatched aircraft/missions/times of day BUT also have the tools (mostly via filters) to make finding the right matches of aircraft/missions/times of day easy.
The issue is that the system generates missions that are physically impossible to complete. That’s not a player choice problem — it’s a validation problem.
Filters can help with preference, but they don’t fix cases where a mission should never exist in the first place (e.g. jets on extremely short runways or night operations at unlit airfields).
If real weather and time are used, then missions should simply not be generated when conditions make them impossible.
I do see it as freedom - and that includes freedom to pick aircraft that don’t work at a runway, or a time of day that doesn’t suit an unlit airport.
If we’re only talking Employee missions where you don’t have those choices, I agree - but I’m just sharing the POV of many (not necessarily me) that people seem to want fewer restrictions, not more.
Sure I am a proponent of freedom. They will never give us “freedom” to choose. The coding would be complex. That’s realism. The compromise is to have missions that work A to B without penalising us for events (ie the bugs) we never created.
You know, you fly career. How many times have you lost rep or Credits through no fault of your own?
Even with full player freedom, there should still be a baseline of realism.
Choosing an aircraft that barely fits a runway is one thing, but being assigned (or even allowed) to arrive at an unlit airfield at night is a completely different case — that’s not a challenge, it’s simply not a valid operation.
In real-world aviation, such a scenario would not be permitted at all, regardless of pilot skill or preference.
So this is not about limiting freedom, but about preventing situations that are fundamentally non-operational.
ADD: Additionally, airports that are no longer operational in real life (historical or decommissioned airfields) should not be used for mission generation.
If such locations are included in the world data for historical or completeness reasons, they should either be excluded from Career missions entirely or treated with strict limitations (e.g. daylight only, small aircraft only).
Using non-operational airfields as standard mission destinations further contributes to invalid or unrealistic scenarios.
The difference we’re talking about here is freedom to make a bad choice (like flying an aircraft to a runway that’s too short for it, or to an unlit airport at night) versus bugs. The formerly is totally avoidable if you do the research that a real pilot would do. John Q Freelancepilot doesn’t just sign on the dotted line for a contract before first analyzing the flight and deciding if his aircraft can manage it. Career puts you in that same position of needing to analyze the mission and decide of its correct for you/your equipment.
I agree with you in principle — if the player has full information, then evaluating a mission makes sense.
The problem is that the game does not provide enough information to make that decision reliably.
For example, there is no clear indication whether an airport has runway lighting, especially for smaller or remote airfields.
So in practice, the player cannot realistically evaluate the mission beforehand — which makes it less about decision-making and more about trial and error.
At that point, it becomes a system issue rather than a player choice.
Companies analyse routes and would never send you to a ridiculous runway. Yes as a pilot you need due diligence but Career mode is the de facto company and is generating flights to odd places, not giving you the correct loads or fuel because the equipment does not work - eg EFB (which I know has had some corrections in SU5) but yoou see what I mean.
No company would provide you with a route to an airport that was 500 ft too short for your aircraft. They simply would not do it.
I see your point about doing the legwork, but that only works if the player actually has access to all the necessary information.
Right now, the game does not reliably provide key data needed to evaluate a mission beforehand — for example, whether an airport has runway lighting or is suitable for night operations.
So in practice, the player cannot make a fully informed decision, even if they want to.
On top of that, in Career mode (especially employee missions), you are not freely building your own operation — you are being assigned missions by the system.
At that point, the system should ensure that the mission is at least valid. Otherwise, it becomes trial-and-error rather than decision-making.
So while I agree that evaluation is part of flying, here the issue is that the game doesn’t provide enough information and can generate missions that are not realistically flyable in the first place.
Yes, you can sometimes see that a mission looks questionable — like a very short runway — but that’s exactly the problem.
If it’s clearly not suitable for the aircraft (for example, a Medevac mission assigned to a Caravan but generated on a ~400 m runway), then why is that mission being generated at all?
At that point it’s no longer about player choice — it’s about the system creating assignments that should never exist in the first place.
Recognizing that something is impossible doesn’t make it good gameplay — it just means the generator failed.
I do, but for a new simmer this is not obvious - and this is an old argument - the “game” should be optimised to play, not trip you up and cause you headaches not of your choosing.
I know you like to point out the opposite of someone else’s point, it still does not make it right that we have not reached a point in this sim where you can confidenly choose a mission, knowing that once you do due diligence you will not have to go and look for another one, then yet another one that suits your aircraft, the runway, the weather, daylight or night landings etc etc.
And that’s why my point is that it should continue to offer you the freedom to make mistakes but introduce the tools to make an informed decision rather than the current system which relies on independent research.
By the way, I wanted to ask - are you still getting aberrant headings vs gyro. I have been doing VOR to VOR flights in 172, setting gyro with compass on the ground but as soon as I am up in the air it is off again by upto 10 deg.
