I often see people claiming that MSFS is pretty realistic. I even saw a post on Reddit from someone claiming to be a pilot and he said that flying in this Sim is even harder than flying IRL.
So, a few weeks after buying the Sim for the PS5, I got curious. At this point I had used the Joby for the majority of my flights, because it’s very easy to fly and my focus was on sightseeing. I’d say that I used the Joby for about 80% of my flights. The rest was GA, mostly the XCub, the DA40 and the Cessna 172. Although for those planes, I often ended the flight mid air. I had done about 5 or 6 landings and not all went well.
For Airliners, I did check out the Boeing 747, the Airbus 320 and the Beluga, but all I did was take off, and fly a few minutes. I’d say I spent less than 20 minutes on Airliners.
So, what did I get curious about? You all know the good, old question: Could a passenger land an Airliner if he/she had to?
Now I’m aware that will probably never happen IRL, at least not for Airliners, but here I am, with very little knowledge and experience and a Sim that is supposed to be pretty realistic. That’s my chance! I want to try this!
So to sum it up: All my knowledge and experience comes from flying the Joby for about 100 hours (which was just take off>get altitude>set level>enjoy the scenery) and about 10-15 hours in GA. And, pretty important, I watched quite a few of Mentour Pilot’s videos, so I know a bit about the systems of an airliner and that those can (and will) interfere in certain situations and under certain circumstances.
Now there was one big problem: Usually, when you think about a scenario where a passenger needs to land an Airliner, this passenger has some help. Usually over the radio. But I don’t know any pilot or someone working in aviation, so I had to do this on my own.
Now, that may sound strange and a bit overconfident, but if something like this would happen to me in real life and there’s no one else who’s qualified, yes, I indeed think I would volunteer before someone else does, simply because I would trust myself more than someone else who I don’t know.
And yes, I think that there would indeed be a small chance for me to bring an Airliner down, without a serious(!) crash and without ppl dying IF I had some help. But on my own? No way! I’m pretty confident when it comes to things like this, but I’m not a fool!
So, I set up a flight from Europe to Miami with the A330, which I haven’t touched before. 200+ ppl on board. All assists off, everything set to “realistic”. I started in air about an hour away from the destination.
And it was perfect, because when I clicked “ready to fly” the plane was immediately out of control with alarms ringing.
Now of course you can never replicate how someone would feel if something like this happened IRL, but I took this serious and I was obviously nervous 'cause I clicked the wrong buttons on my controller a few times.
First thing I did was to stabilize the plane. No problem.
Next, I tried to engage the AP but it didn’t work.
It took me quite some time to realize that there’s a red warning showing on the display. Now that’s something I learned from Mentour Pilot’s videos, red needs immediate action. So I checked the message and it said “flaps not 0” or something like that.
Of course I knew that I had just to press the D-Pad to set the flaps but I kept it realistic and started looking for the in cockpit flap controls. When I found 'em I set it to 0.
And while looking for the flaps I also realized that the gear is down!
So after I retracted the gear I tried to engage the AP again. It worked now but didn’t do anything, so I turned it off again.
The alarms were now off and I relaxed a bit. Now I started to wonder about our heading. Are we still on course? I had no idea, I just knew that we should reach Florida soon. But because of clouds I couldn’t see anything. So I decided to bring the plane below the clouds.
I thought I saw land at one point but it turned out to be more clouds. After a while I started losing hope and thought we’re way of course.
But then, finally, land! And, I almost couldn’t believe it, just minutes after reaching Florida I spotted a large Airport! So maybe we still were on course and that’s Miami? No idea, don’t care, any Airport is fine!
So I tried to fly a loop to get to the airport but I completely lost orientation and couldn’t find it anymore. So I started to just fly around and after a while I saw the Airport again. Or maybe it was another one, no idea. I tried my best to keep it in sight and get closer. I made three attempts to approach a runway and land, but every time auto throttle engaged and ruined my attempt. At this point I seriously had little hope left.
But then I did it! Somehow this time auto throttle didn’t interfere and I landed the plane without crashing and, according to the game, even without damaging the plane.
I just couldn’t believe it! And I still don’t. That just can’t be even close to realistic!
Now I wonder what everyone else thinks and if there are ppl here who tried this themselves. I’m sure there are some!
Certainly you could deliberately invoke conditions or take actions to artificially induce an emergency but most aircraft when entered airborne are relatively stable and in nominal operating state.
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