Medium cargo missions allow airports with too short runway length

ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue: Airport 4TA4 Pea Patch for medium cargo freelancer career mission is unsuitable for Cessna 208. I started medium cargo freelance cargo career mission with C208 departing Airport 4TA4 Pea Patch to Airport MMBG Badiraguato and the runway is not suitable for the aircraft. There is a grass runway next to the asphalt runway that would be suitable.

This runway is not suitable because it is too short for the Cessna 208 required 2,500 feet for take off. Also, there are fences immediately to the north and south of the runway that you will hit if you can’t rotate. Lastly, the game forces you to spawn to the west of the building at that runway and you have to taxi through a gate that is made for a vehicle. The Cessna 208 has too large of a wingspan to fit into that gate.

ICAO, coordinates, or specific location: ICAO 4TA4.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

How often does this occur for you (Example: Just once, every time on sim load, intermittently)? Every time you attempt to depart ICAO 4TA4.

REPRODUCTION STEPS

Please list clear steps you took in order to help our test team reproduce the same issue:

  1. Select ICAO 4TA4 and attempt to depart.

YOUR SETTINGS

No mods or relevant peripherals.

MEDIA

[END OF FIRST USER REPORT]


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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:
•

Would you mind explaining why it is not suitable? Is it too short? Looks like it is painted as a closed runway.

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Unfortunately in the medium cargo missions you have too much weight to hit V1 speed prior to the end of that runway. Also, the game starts you off to the west of that building of the airfield. You have to taxi along the grassy runway of this paved runway and you have to enter a small vehicle gate to access the pavement runway. The Cessna 208 wingspan cannot fit through the gate. Luckily, I was able to use reverse thrust and wiggled the aircraft through it kinda like fitting a couch through a regular doorway. Lastly, there are fences immediately to the north and south of the runway. You will hit those fences if you can’t rotate. I’m not a pilot, but I did a little search on the World Wide Web and found that the Cessna has a take off approximately 2,500 feet. I know I should look at the POH, but this airfield is well under any Cessna requirements. I don’t know what this airfield looks like in free mode. I only visited it in career mode doing medium cargo missions.

perfect fit… NOT :smiley:

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:
• Find a flight that has a runway that is too short to take off from or too short to land at. That last one sucks because sometimes you forget and you don’t know till you get there.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
PC-24, with well more than 200m of runway required (1657m (+5000ft alt) required according to the whitepaper above @Bullbrauch) for takeoff, being offered a flight that has a starting location with 181m of runway.


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 far as I can find on the fly none of the four medium cargo airplanes currently abailable in the sim have an official takeoff / ground roll or landing distance below 550m.
But a LOT of cargo missions start or end on runways way shorter.
Look at the screenshot below. That highlighted aircraft just north of the Alps is my SkyCourier. I want to fly it southeastwards, to the Balkans or Italy. Of the ten or so medium cargo misssions that are available within a ~500km circle around the airplane’s current location and go in the right direction I can fly exactly none. Because every single one of them starts and/or ends at a sub 430m runway. Quite a few even at sub 250m runways.
This is, frankly, absurd.

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

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Please Microsoft, I would love to be included in the screenshot challange. This is my proud flight of 5+ hours in my new Pilatus PC-24, that I then paid extra to be manovered, to a suitable length take off runway. This is my aborted landing at the end due to, yet again a runway that is to short. I would love advice from the profecional fliers out there if it could have been possible. In theory I had 400ft of runway to spare, but the autogen trees, greater than a 50ft obsticle hamperd my landing. Once again I just lose credits and time. Please sort it out, or at least give us a laugh and put me up for the screenshot challenge when youy nex tell us what you are not doing to rectify problems. ( sorry for the rant, trying to be pacient but starting to lose it)

Could you use the EFB to see the runway length before departure? In the US I use airnav.com to look up airport info and approach/departure plates if applicable before accepting a mission.

I’ve run into runways that are too short in the PC24 and vision jet and only had issues on departure in the caravan.

The PC 24 need a tweak of its flight characteristics too, you have to come in way too fast to fly a reasonable approach and landing without having to drag it in on the stall horn. So even if it could land on the distance available irl, the sim feels like it needs a slight tweak. My general rule of thumb with the PC 24 is no airport under 4000ft unless I can see there’s no trees on the approach or departure ends of the runways.

1 Like

This seems to happen to me constantly with the medium cargo missions.

I have this same issue. I use the PC-24 and I got a 239ft runway… Offloaded all my fuel, left myself with 2% then used half-flaps, a bit of field and a lot of prayers, finally got airbourne and I stalled out… This NEEDS fixed asap… Certain aircraft should have a runway minimum for missions. This is such an easy fix!

Don’t wait for Asobo to do anything about this. Actually isn’t it more like RL for some missions to be unwise? You have the choice to accept or reject any mission for runway suitability, weather, inappropriate (or just buggy) aircraft or whatever.

Always check your destination airport before accepting the mission. I use LittleNavMap but Google would work just as well, you only need the width, length, elevation and surface type.

Maybe that info is also in EFB - in RL it certainly would be, but I don’t want to spend the time looking there.

I learned the hard way after arriving at too many strips that were completely inappropriate for the aircraft of the mission. Many go-arounds, a few crashes, no good for the “Reputation”.

The runway info is indeed avaliable in the EFB, that’s where I check every time. In the route plan just click on the “i” beside the airport and on that page on “runways”, then you get all the info you need (I find this easier and faster than checking external sources).

3 Likes


Last landing attempt before I sold the PC-24. Just not a compatable plane for cargo missions. nearly all runways were to short. (nice cloud of dust at the end of the runway though)


ISSUE DESCRIPTION

Description of the issue:

Career medium cargo mission ended airfield that has not enough runway for Pilatus PC 12. This aircraft needs 2,485 feet (758 metres) runway, but my mission ended near Denmark, Copenhagen, EK66 airfield which has 282m long runway, of course i overran the runway and mission failed (2.5 hrs wasted with reputation reduction and no income).
(plane survived, but reason for failing was that i stopped too far and game said i landed in wrong place).
I was just a pilot, plane and route was game generated.

[PC Only] I don’t use mods.

FREQUENCY OF ISSUE

Most Pilatus medium cargo missions end way too short runways.

2 Likes

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

Provide extra information to complete the original description of the issue:
• multiple crashes because of too short runway

If relevant, provide additional screenshots/video:
•

I am far from an expert (as you can probably tell in the video below) but that is actually a large field runway at LFMF, the small tarmac strips are landing strips “for the exclusive use of gliders”. I was barely able to take off in a PC-24 fully loaded with fuel, landing went ok once I could find it (had to use slew but in theory a flight plan and autopilot would cover that for a mission approach). Here was my landing in case it helps.

Not all missions are suitable for all possible planes and I’ve ended up aborting more than a few missions when I didn’t fully vet the runways (or go for it anyway and crash, I always carry full insurance for now).

I have also gone over into free flight to practice landing at some airports. Some airports I choose to take the PC-12 instead of the -24 because I know it can stop much faster. Some I just won’t fly into at all, as annoying as that is.

We really need runway length on the mission list page and ability to sort and filter them. I hate it when I spend a half hour looking for a suitable mission.