[Official] Community Fly-In Friday: Kentucky Derby

[SeedyL3205]

We will be hosting an Official Fly-in alongside a group of community members (you!) on Twitch. This is an open event, free to all who would like to fly along with us and available to pilots of all skill levels. The goal is to have a great time, explore new locations of the world, and make new friends. This event is open to pilots on both sim versions (MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024) and both the PC and Xbox platforms.

Hosted by @SeedyL3205
When: Friday, May 1 @ 1800Z for two hours.
2026-05-01T18:00:00Z
Where: The Official Twitch Channel of MSFS

There will also be a Discord event channel open for those who want to voice chat with other members of the community.

Please see below for details on the upcoming Fly-In Event:

FLIGHT DETAILS

Put on a fancy hat and mix yourself a mint julep because it’s Derby Weekend! For our Community Fly-In Friday event this week, we’re off to Louisville, Kentucky which is hosting the world’s most famous horse race on Saturday, the renowned Kentucky Derby!

We’ll depart from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio and then have a touch & go landing in Cincinnati. From there, we’ll tour the Bluegrass State with stops at Lexington and Fort Knox before we visit the Churchill Downs racetrack and then have our full stop landing at Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, named for the champion boxer commonly known as “The Greatest” who is originally from the area.

Optional Payware Add-on: Simmers may choose to buy or rent the “KSDF Louisville International Airport” by developer FSDreamTeam. As the worldwide hub for UPS’s cargo operations, KSDF is a major air traffic center in the region. This purchase is entirely optional and is not required to join this fly-in.

MSFS (2020) and MSFS 2024 Pilots on PC can download the .pln file here:
2026-05-01 Kentucky Derby.PLN (2.8 KB)

MSFS 2024 Pilots on PC, PS5, and Xbox can import the flight plan from the new Flight Planner tool at this link.

You can find instructions on how to load a flight plan from the Flight Planner website to your in-sim EFB on your PC or PS5/Xbox console on our forums here.

We will be starting at KFFO. Please load your aircraft 10 minutes prior to take off and taxi over to the runway in preparation for departure.

AIRCRAFT

Recommended aircraft: Cessna 172, CubCrafters X or NX Cub, Diamond DA40, JMB Aviation VL-3, Pipistrel Virus SW121, or any aircraft of your choice with a cruise speed of 120 knots or greater.

MULTIPLAYER SETTINGS

Please adhere to the following settings so you can see everyone / be seen by everyone.

Variable	Setting
Server	SE Asia
Multiplayer	All Players
Live traffic	As preferred
Weather	Few Clouds
Time of Day	Daytime

COMMUNICATION

To communicate with others, a voice channel on the "Official Microsoft Flight Simulator Discord” at https://discord.gg/msfs will be available to join.

LET’S FLY

This is meant to be a fun and informal flight. Everybody is welcome, no matter your platform, sim version, or level of experience.

[Zadma]

Taking off from an Air Force base
Flying to a horse race

Seedy, I implore you - it is not too late to make the P-51 Mustang the official aircraft for this fly-in

[Newspawnz]

From SU5 release notes …

Fixed collision issue when the plane is moving under bridges

This one is for SeedyL

[Newspawnz]

It was great to see so many other players in the air after the betas.

I was able to land at the race track, unfortunately the ground needs a bit of love

[ElkanDavid]

As usual a fun community flight! A nice ending with the landing at the actual Kentucky Derby.

[IceManDBB]

My thoughts exactly:

[Orbitbold]

A great flight once more. It’s great to be “back” from the Beta and fly with the large crowd.

I’m on a very slow internet connection that struggles with photogrammetry, but I had sent a plane to follow the flight plan on autopilot earlier in the day, AFK, just to pre-fill my rolling cache. This seems to have worked great.

In addition, I tested running SU5 with wake turbulence enabled. With a crowd size like today, this would previously have murdered my CPU, a Ryzen 7 3700X. To my surprise, this didn’t seem to bring my system below my FPS target, as long as I kept the visualisation off. With the CFD and wake display active, my CPU still chokes up super hard, but I’m OK with that and shouldn’t expect that particular CPU to perform any miracles anyway.

In fact, it was me who was almost “murdered” by someone else’s wake!

Sketchy landing on top of Fort Knox. Even more sketchy flying whenever taking external screenshots from a chopper without autopilot.

[TheHunDude]

Nice event last week, flew with live weather which was quite windy. But it was an enjoyable flight nonetheless with visiting Fort Knox and trying to land at the venue of the Derby.