I was in the same situation. I saved a flight in cold and dark and after loading, the engine was running again. I guess the panel / aircraft state isn’t saved correctly…
I just had a look at the FLT file that the sim generates. Everything seems to be saved correctly (e.g. the avionics switch is off). But when I load the flight, the switch is on. Seems to be a problem with loading rather than saving.
I found the solution:
In the FLT file, there’s a section that looks like this:
[FreeFlight]
FirstFlightState=LANDING_TAXI
Changing LANDING_TAXI to PREFLIGHT_PUSHBACK will load the aircraft with the engines off. Even the switches seem to be in the position I saved them in, so it’s not just the default cold and dark state.
I guess the problem is how states are updated internally. Maybe states just don’t go back to PREFLIGHT_PUSHBACK once you started the engine or something like that. I’ll file a bug report.
Thanks for giving me the motivation to look into that.