There is a certain amount of selection bias in these lists.
The sort of person who posts in these lists is also the sort of person that tends to like deeper simulations.
The casual “download anything cheapish and fly it upside down under the London bridge” crew are unlikely to post their preferences in here.
So I suppose landing a helicopter inside a giant power station chimney or flying it under the Eiffel Tower is also not allowed? 
How about taking a prop plane through the middle of that donut sculpture in Dubai? As long as I wasn’t upside down it’s OK? 
Only kidding I get what you’re saying. Although I think the main factor in all these choices is the feel of the things in flight. If it handles believably. In turn those aircraft where the devs know what they are doing enough to have all those other features working, also means the flight model will be as close as possible to the real thing too, almost as a given. If they’ve gone to the extra time of making loads of system depth then it gives a good indication and trust that they will have got the basics of handling perfected (within what MSFS allows!) I think.
Not sure how such a list could be ranked though as it’s not really comparable to just “count the features”. Obviously a study level passenger jet has a lot more “countable things” so if we did a list like this it should probably be a % of “potential” features of any aircraft. In which case a simple but feature-rich plane has a chance.
I suppose what I am saying is the popularity of stuff like the Carenado offerings ---- look good, very affordable, minimal system depth, easy CTRL -E start, AP in every plane and have a flight model which matches the POH (but is otherwise relatively generic and easy to fly for a beginner) is not reflected here.
Whilst many people posting here in this thread seem to prefer systems depth and a “warts and all” realistic flight model which includes all the flaws of the real aircraft, there is a huge market out there for Carenado style light weight stuff at a cheapish price.
Note there is nothing wrong with Carenado aircraft, they just target a different market, and their newer offerings do actually seemingly have more depth and realism. Carenado was just chosen as an example because they sell in huge numbers but NOT ONE Carenado aircraft made the top 25.
Agreed, seems most people posting here are not your typical video game player.
That’s allowed 
Always liked the Carenado Cessna 337 Skymaster II though, was my favorite GA plane in FSX when there were fewer choices. Granted, it lacks the system depth of present day addons in MSFS, but has a nice panel and avionics and still want it in my hangar.
The Carenado Archer ll is one of the very best aircraft to fly in the sim in fact.
A lot of assumptions and speculation on the type of people who post in this thread. Stats and sample error are very difficult to get your head round and even harder to pin down.
In my view the only way (and I’m afraid it is the only way) you’d be able to state anything about the “type” of simmers who post their top 10 every month, or just some months, would be to collect a lot more data on the poster (e.g., flying hours, length of time using MSFS, IRL experience, etc, etc, etc, to analyse. Most users would probably baulk at providing that level of info and it’d probably be against forum guidelines in any case. It would also take a huge amount of work to collate this information.
So I personally wouldn’t draw any serious conclusions from the Top 10 but I’ve learned an awful lot from it , read posts from users with lots of different and sometimes unusual preferences and it’s definitely made me spend more on aircraft..
Great work and it’s the most essential part of the forum for me
Yes, that’s probably the case. And maybe it would be difficult to make such a list. Still, with only the all-time favourite list as a help for decision I would never fly the WBsim C172, as an example.
Right, there are exceptions and I think the WB-Sim 172 is underrated. Also the FSReborn Sting S4, I don’t own it but read lots of great reviews.
I just rely on the reputation of certain developers like PMDG, A2A, Orbx and others that always make well simulated aircraft, airports and scenery.
The old..
I used January as I seem to have missed February
The new list, for March, has a few differences, WU12 changed stuff and some of my previous favourites have become unwieldy, ungainly and tiresome..
Good points folks.
It depends how far down the list you cast your eyes. It’s still pretty high up, but you need to check the whole PDF. As is the Sting.
The way I see it is that ALL the planes mentioned (maybe the top 150 at least) are all really good. There are another 300+ aircraft (probably much more in total, no actual idea what’s available now in total?!) that are never mentioned - meaning all the ones on here are rated high by at least a few people haha. If you’ve already bought the top 25 then dive deeper 
I think the Archer will be in there next month though.
I’ve been thinking of a way to take votes “per category” alongside the overall ranks but not thought of a clean and easy way of doing it yet. Idea to bring up some “less popular” aircraft types into visibility. Don’t want to over complicate things though! Still thinking 
If I were a new developer of payware aircraft and I had confidence in my product I would offer a free 2 week trial to get the ball rolling and some exposure. Like they are doing in DCS now.
Let’s see 150 aircraft x $20 avg per aircraft = $3000. Hey lemme go get my credit card.
Don’t scare me!! I still need to add up my hangar for @XboxMonkey4665 
Well you shouldn’t have mentioned there was going to be a “bulging hangar” contest!
That’s what she said before she left me 
ROFL & LMAO 
I’m on total 100 (+/- a couple), that includes all the deluxe edition aircraft as well though.
Gonna have to have a couple glasses of wine first tonight before I add up how many are the paid for planes.
Used to average £25 per plane….a scary trend of £50 a pop has begun though. Not many freebies, Cessna 152, Fokker Dr.1
Last one I added was the Wilma.
Been thinking of dividing my top ten into categories so I spread my vote around more areas. My current thought: Prop planes; jet aircraft; warplanes; bush; other. 5 categories, 2 from each one
This is my train of thought too 
I think we may need more categories, but yeah it could be a way forwards. Problems are if players don’t have/want any from any specific category it starts get out of kilter. And presenting the results gets a bit fragmented. I would need to output a separate table per category and the “combined” one, and the monthly 25 would always be combined or ALSO separate it out there…? It’s a lot more pieces to manage.
But I have a function in the spreadsheet called “Pivot Tables” which I think can be utilised to make this a bit easier (almost automated) for me if I can figure it out. I’ll have more of a think but we could implement a major change like this after 6 months (3 more from now) of this system perhaps. Food for thought!
Things to consider based on your categories:
“Other” becomes a fight in itself with only 2 slots.
If we have those 5 categories with THREE per slot, 15 total. Maybe this?
Also I don’t want to endlessly go back to people saying they put something in the wrong category (and then waiting for a reply that may never come), or semantics arguments about what a plane should be classified as.
Technically it would be easy for me to add a category column and place each aircraft in ONE category and do the same when a new one is mentioned, but some planes can sit in multiple categories unless we get too specific. It’s not as easy as it should be to do this …which is where I am stuck
Happy to chat about some solutions and ideas around this if anyone has a good idea!
Main thing is I don’t want to make it too complicated to vote and I don’t want to “dilute” the current system but I do want to find a way to spread the love more across types.
I really think the list should not be deivided into categories.. If I want to take a look at airliners I can check the list for airliners.. But I personally like the idea that every aircraft is voted against all others.
Off the top of my head, you could have many categories, but only allowed to submit a max of 2 planes from any 5 categories.
Warplanes is interesting, F22 I’d call a warplane and not put as a jet (only my view though)…but the Goliath - where does that go, airliner (it was the first), or warplane (it could carry bombs).
A very unthought out thought (as in just popped into head). All planes are listed on a pdf in categories, and those submitting get the appropriate category from the pdf…..I can imagine the time that would take to compile, continually updating it with missing aircraft. This could be like ‘down the rabbit hole’ in Alice in Wonderland….
First 16 seconds are all you need (as in what Baracus250 might be thinking about now)