Hi all new to MSFS 2020 and was wondering why the default tail number is N918AE?
I am familiar with this tail number and it is a real tail number currently assigned to an American Eagle Commuter jet. I have another reason too but was just curious as to why a real tail number.
On which plane? I assume you’re using a livery (a repaint)? If it’s a livery, the author of the livery will typically choose an Registration number that appeals to them, for whatever reason. Normally, it would be the actual registration number of the plane the livery represents, but, sometimes it’s just a number the author fancies. Maybe they like to fly American Eagle routes.
That’s certainly not the registration number on all planes and liveries.
Thanks for the reply, that tail number looks like the default for me as it is on every plane. I ask as this number was at one time assigned to a Jetsream for American Eagle which crashed back in 1994 killing 15 of the 18 aboard, I was the lead mechanic that signed off on the paperwork as the aircraft left it’s last maintenance checks, pilot flew it into the ground.
Default tail number at launch was ASXGS, ASXGSA or some variant. Something in your configuration plugged that other number in. If you’re running any Mods including liveries, it’s possibly one of those.
Oops, I forgot that. The next time you are creating a flight, select the plane at the top left, and select the “ATC” choice. Is it possible you typed that in their at some point.
Since a few versions back they now remember the last thing you typed in their. They misunderstood what people were asking for. It used to be FS actively wrote to the aircraft.cfg file, and changed that value for you on a livery basis if you changed it in the aircraft details form. Asobo set up that field so it’s used for all planes… hate that.
I have a feeling some of our requests they act upon don’t come out the way we want due to language. While the top team members to speak English quite well, I’m not sure that rings true for the rest of the team. There’s always going to be something lost in the translation to French.
And a lack of understanding of FSX and why certain things were done. I imagine a lot of them are gaming programmers, kids (as far as I’m concerned, haha, yeah, I’m jealous 
), who are given a job and say… “Ok, here you go” without any context of having actually played the game in the past, and maybe not now, either.
I remember watching a video back not too long after launch where I think it was either Seb or Martial being asked if they had played any other flight sim, and they said they hadn’t because they found them too intimidating. 
Sounds kind of odd that you’d go into building a flight simulator without actually having any experience using one in the past.
That also explains why what simmers would consider very basic features in a sim are still lacking this far after launch.
This sounds like Ouija Board stuff to me. And quite spooky if true. If this was the ATC Callsign in your sim from initial installation and you did not change it in the ATC dropdown menu than if it were me, I would remove the sim from my computer and never touch it again, as I would be convinced it was possessed.
It looked familiar to me, we had a bunch of ex American Eagle Jetstreams in our fleet with similar registrations in the past. Not this one though:
You can change the registration to anything you want by swapping out whatever the dev had to whatever you want by going to the aircraft folder within you community/simobjects/airplanes/whatever airplane/aircraft .cfg folder–open it in notepad and modify atc_id line and save. It will show up on your aircraft panel and side registration decal on the fuselage.
Holy ■■■■. That’s pretty heavy. Is that the one that encountered icing while in hold pattern on approach to Chicago?
It’s all in the report, one mouse click away. 
PROBABLE CAUSE: “1) The captain’s improper assumption that an engine had failed and 2) the captain’s subsequent failure to follow approved procedures for engine failure single-engine approach and go-around, and stall recovery.
Contributing to the cause of the accident was the failure of AMR Eagle/Flagship management to identify, document, monitor and remedy deficiencies in pilot performance and training.”
I’m pretty sure you have laid your hands on most of the Jetstreams I have been flying in EU, most of them (edit, ALL of them) came from American Eagle, via a 100 other airlines they were taken over by the company I worked for. I will try to find out what the registrations are (or were, some have been cannibalized for parts now and will likely never fly again).
Edit: here they are:
N953LM (now PH-BCI)
N860AE (now PH-CCI)
N916AE (now PH-DCI)
N864AE (now PH-FCI)
N854AE (now PH-HCI)
N844AE (now PH-NCI)
N846AE (now PH-OCI)
N848AE (now PH-RCI)
Some of those Crapstreams are still going strong 
. We used to say “its not broken, it’s British”.
Yes those registrations look familiar . I also see that the cargo pod has been retained, the latches on those are a PITA and the latch was the last thing that I worked on on that AC before it was released. I believe that tail number N918AE is in the livery and was picked up as the default . Now that tail number is assigned to a Embraer ERJ-145LR which appears to be based out Chicago.
Yeah without cargo pod there is no space for any baggage, they are a must on some routes… They haven’t aged very well though, everything is always broken, most aircraft are crooked and un-trimmeable. No autopilot on any of the ex-AE aircraft, the flight director is pretty useless. I think the only thing added since they left AE is maybe the Sandel display in place of the right side RMI as TAWS display adn maybe TCAS?
“The most unstable, underpowered, thinnest winged, Poorly heated/cooled, overused, noisy, continuously WAT limited, Difficult to grease on the runway, 19 passenger planes ever built.” 
Those cargo pods where built in Little Rock Arkansas by a third party vendor just one building away from where I worked for American Eagle at that time. Taking then off and putting them back on was another PITA as the bolts where very hard to get too. From what you say those airframes should be scrapped. Another AC that we maintained at the time, SAAB 340s, had to have about 400 lbs thrown into the rear cargo compartment, or a couple of mechanics in the rear seats, for maintenance flights to get the CG in line. TCAS was added when I worked on the Jetstream and that was fun, I was both a mechanic and avionics guy.
Hahaha, with all of those great attributes I’m really surprised the British military missed using them for our training.
Weren’t those the MK 1 Jetstreams (T1/2) with the Astazou engines? Its a completely different aircraft I believe, the cockpit looks so different from the Jetstream 31 and 32, looks the same from the outside though.
Nope the ones I worked on had GE engines.