For me the choice of aircraft has been coloured by the stability of the sim over time since release. I came into this back in August as a commercial aircraft flyer but back then things were such that the only reliable platform was the smaller GA aircraft. I’ll be honest, I’ve had sufficient fun, albeit interspersed with periods of intense frustration, that I’ve yet to go back to the big jets. I’m not even thinking about the FBW until its available on the store as I really don’t want to start accumulating vast amounts of gigabytes in the community folder. Accordingly my 3rd party acquisitions have also all been acquired via the store and the only things cluttering up my community folder are liveries and my Navigraph data. All of that said my go to airframes as of today are as follows:
#5. Cirrus SR22.
For those journeys that are low and slow my favourite single prop is the SR22. It has a reasonable turn of speed and the avionics are clean enough to be able to be operated in flight if you want to change your route or approach.
#4. Embraer Bandeirante
The closest thing I’ve got to an airliner. It’s multi purpose role and avionics makes it more fun to fly than the Caravan although it is let down by its speed.
#3 TBM 930
Fantastic aircraft, Fast, easy to fly and easy to update the GPS in flight. If you’re looking to do some extended journeys and don’t want to spend forever doing it then this is the aircraft for you. Let down by the turboprop issues which have probably got many of us into bad habits when trying to balance torque with speed but overall it has been great fun to date.
#2 Piper Seneca V
My latest acquisition, and after a period of orientation fast becoming my favourite aircraft. The combination of steam guages and baby Garmins makes it very easy to fly. Once again speed isn’t great but an hour’s flying will still find you over 200 miles from your starting point.
#1 King Air 350i
The perfect balance between the speed of the TBM and the enjoyment of the Seneca. It takes a while to learn the intricacies of the touch screen MFD, which is so different from other planes in the sim, but then once you learn where everything is it all becomes second nature and you just end up flying all over the world in it.
So there’s my top 5. What’s yours?