A lot of that seems to be based on landing smoothness. Land with under 200 feet per second to get a decent score. If you land hard it will hurt your score for certain.
Sometimes freelance missions will give you unrealistic altitudes for the aircraft you are flying. I was flying a VIP mission in a Cessna 172 and the flight plan was IFR at 23,000 feet. IIRC the max altitude for a Cessna is 13,000 feet. However, you can change this in the EFB and re-file the flight plan with ATC.
You may need to restart the mission because it may cause ATC to stop working so you can’t even request taxi, however, after it will keep your new flight level even after restarting the mission.
I’d like to add another tip:
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Do not have your own company and aircraft. The insurance cost will add up every day regardless if you fly or not, so your insurance cost will only grow and eventually wipe out your whole bank account. Insurance currently is NOT tied to your flight hours, it is cumulative even if you don’t play the sim.
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For the same reason, do not have more than one aircraft and do not employ “crew”, because the insurance cost will only be higher and wipe you out even faster.
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Just fly a few missions as a Freelancer to collect enough money for most certifications, then sell everything and keep flying Employee missions. The “company” aspect is not working and it just erases your money. Wait a few years until this part of the game is fixed.
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Way to penalise occasional players. Or even those that just want to dabble in career mode and use free flight the rest of the time.
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What is still missing from this list is information about which planes you can buy in the career actually work, I’ll start with that
- Pilatus PC12 / Cargo / no missions available
- ES-30 / Passenger / has too many bugs / works but not recommended
What I would be interested in - does the Longitude / VIP work??
- why can’t you buy the Dreamliner? Because it’s heavy?
Great notes, regarding your last item “blue boxes”
You do not need to follow these at all. I fly with them off and never look at them at all and score perfect in that score all the time.
What you need to do is follow proper airport procedures. Proper departure and arrivals. VFR for instance is just a standard pattern.
I never follow tax ribbons either. Just tax appropriately and do not enter runway if offered a taxi option even though it doesn’t follow ribbons.
Here’s a flight as an example… just followed proper VFR rules and airport procedures. If you don’t know them, then maybe the point is to push you to learn them or follow blue gates if you don’t.
Neither of these flights followed blue boxes at all.
I usually take off following airport chart departure procedures and then climb out departing whatever direction I announced or was given and then do a direct to on the GPS from my current position and enter pattern on arrival.
EDIT: If you do not have access to Jeppesen charts I just noticed the MS has a tool of their own now.
I did not have the same results. I chose my own runway (properly) and got gigged for it. Not every airport is properly coded enough, nor is the weather truth apparent enough to trust what the sim thinks is supposed to happen. Backtaxi is also a mess.
Also, for all your flying correctly, when exiting the runway are you stopping short of the hold short lines, on the runway side as prompted? Not only will it gig you for doing that correct to real-world standards, but it won’t even sequence the next communication if you don’t do it as prompted.
Just to be clear, I’m not contending that this works perfect every time.
I’d say in the three regions I fly I can do a non-bugged S flight more than 50% of the time.
The rest is just being penalized for things I can’t control like flying over an airport unannounced or really buggy taxi options… like via taxi way C B D cross RWY 24L Z B D and when I cross runway 24L I get penalized for entering runway unannounced… didn’t want to repeat all that as its been beaten to death. There are obvious issues.
Point of the post was more to say that the blue ribbons are for people who probably don’t want to or don’t care about proper procedures and just want to fly.
As far as recommending that you follow the blue gates. They are absolutely not required. I literally never follow them and my flight plan is nowhere close to either them or the EFB most of the time.
I’ve found that you don’t have to fly the boxes for the overall geometry of the pattern and the flight path itself, but you do for the takeoff/landing direction it decides is safe and the taxi stuff I mentioned in my last. I haven’t been flying them lately, either, and noticed it doesn’t affect my score, either - except for what I mentioned.
Yes, I’ve run into the sequencing issue once.
And yes, there are clear violations of real world procedures, but when flying with assistance off, It still shows the hold short boxes…
Sometimes if the airport is too large (many exits to runways) i have to flip on the assitance just to see where it wants me to exit as the highspeed exit I used hasn’t triggered.
Well you clearly have to land on the runway that either you announced, or was filed by you or directed by ATC… you can’t just fly anywhere you like. Again, If I follow procedures I’m good.
I’ll have to go back and check that it changes the runway based on callouts. I know for a fact it did not allow me to “request” a different runway for takeoff (at a non-towered field no less). There are apparently some workarounds with the EFB, but I’m not going to futz with that when I’m overflying, trying to check the windsock at an airport dozens of miles from the nearest AWOS (which is going to be dubious, anyway).
During one mission (it happened twice to me) I was assigned a different Runway than the EFB showed… (I was already setup for a pattern to enter the one in the EFB) I paused for a bit because clearly the real life situation is to follow the instructions, but who the @#%# knows with a brand new sim.
FYI, I followed the instructions without penalty, so if they change the RWY on you, land on the new RWY.
Second time it happened I was curious to see if the system knew what RWY I was landing on at all, so I followed the proper pattern for EFB runway (opposite to what was announced to me)
I got a RED warning for landing on wrong runway.
Hope that helps…
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Yeah, I’ve had all sorts of inconsistent things like that. I chalk it up to teething of the sim and don’t take it overly personally (it’s both aggravating and funny). But I do try to troubleshoot and collect evidence so someone sitting in a cubicle somewhere can fix it.
Definitely don’t need to fly any sort of pattern on arrival. Just land on the assigned runway after making sure you acknowledge the prompt to announce you’re on finals.
That doesn’t always allow you to score perfect points… if you are looking for the S score 100/100/100/100 then I have found you need to at minimum fly a standard pattern (not the descent part, just the pattern), unless of course its a straight in clearance. If its VFR and you are announcing I have lost points for flying straight in on the “airline procedures” section.
Thanks for collecting these bugs. Here’s one that popped up after the Update:
Went into my Company page to select a mission. When the ‘Hanger splash screen’ opened, my Cabri was bouncing around on its own in the hanger. I hit Start Mission and the ramp splash screen opened up with the Cabri still bouncing around on the ramp. Then I got a Mission failure helo Crash screen. Went back into my Company, and now I have no Cabri with a negative ballence on my Company spreadsheet.
Guess I need to fly more and get credits to purchase a new aircraft. 
After last update my TBM still not working (cant sell etc), but also… my DA62 not working also, so now I have VIP charters company with two planes, without charter missions (on my own), and cant sell any of my planes
There’s no real issue with C172 and skydiving.
AP setup:
Set altitude to 10000 feet AGL.
Set speed to Vy. Once airborne activate AP HDG and FLC mode
Lean mixture as you climb to keep rpm at peak.
If there a thermals around, use it. If no thermals, then fly straight whenever possible to max climb rate
Ideally you get to the first marker just in time when reaching 10000feet AGL.
I set Flaps 10 when reducing speed for dropping to get it more stable
After the skydivers are gone. Reduce throttle to idle, set flaps 0. Turn to one side while applying full rudder in opposite direction. Now you either slip down to the ground (do not spin) or neutral rudder and acclerate to Vne.
Plan your decent flight path so that you don’t need throttle at least until short final. E.g. approach the final marker with Vne just above the ground. Carefully pull back to gain height (take care of the Gs) and reduce speed. Now you can set full flaps and land smooth on runway. 
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I should point out that the game says insurance is billed per flight hour for the last 24 hours. So if you didn’t fly during the last 24 hours, my math tells me that 0 flight hours multiplied by any price equals 0 credits. It is not supposed to bill you on your cumulative flight hours for all time every single day. That makes absolutely no sense.
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