Will Charlie, the A.I. Pilot, ever sober up and learn how to safely fly a simple flight plan?

Discussion Hub General Discussion
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So I’ve been flying the A.I. quite a bit lately. Here’s what I’ve learned:

  1. Flight plans matter. For instance, it’s important to tell the A.I. that you’ll be using the high-altitude route. This provides the A.I. with detailed route-finding. I find it works very well.
  2. On the world map, depart from a specific parking space, and aim to complete the flight at a specific arrival parking space. Having some knowledge of how the selected airports/runways work (for departure/arrival) will probably be a big advantage here (just a guess).
  3. The A320 Neo is an ideal candidate for a fully ‘hands-off’ flight (start to finish, including taxi-to-runway at departure and taxi-to-parking at arrival).

Problems:

  1. At departure, A.I. will successfully request push back, will taxi out to take-off runway, but often then requires the player to manually request take-off clearance, despite having the A.I. set to manage ATC comms. It’s odd. Sometimes works without manual intervention, sometimes not.
  2. On approach, A.I. often seems to make slightly late decisions, particularly when lining up to the runway approach grid. It’s a bit untidy and sometimes results in a heart-stopping scramble to get the plane into correct alignment. Starting this process a bit further out from arrival seems to be a better idea. Would be nice to see this tweaked by the developers.
  3. A.I. can sometimes manage to taxi-to-parking (assuming you’ve specified a parking slot in your flight plan), but often will land safely and then…sorta lose its way. So far, if this happens, I’ve found this to be irretrievable (i.e. without manual intervention). A great shame.

Conclusion:

A.I. flights (fully ‘hands-off’) are very nearly a thing. Almost fully working. But there’s still too much of an element of risk and gamble involved for the player to feel assured their ‘hands-off’ flight will complete without mishaps. A.I. uncertainty at crucial points (such as safely getting off the arrival runway to the designated parking bay) needs to be hammered down. The ultimate ‘passenger experience’ in MSFS 2020 is within touching distance!