Airliner Pilot

Do you fire up the sim and just fly around the virtual world with no particular place in mind to land or visit? If you do, you're like me, and I don't think there is anything at all wrong with the concept of wandering around the virtual world! As a matter of fact, I consider myself an expert in the fine art of wandering! You know, come to think of it, I think the "professional" name for this particular activity is called "exploring"! That's what's great about the simulator. You can go where you want, when you want, and discover the thrills and sites of the virtual and real world! But there's another type of adventure in simming, and that is flying with a purpose. Taking on the responsibilities of getting yourself, passengers, and the aircraft from one destination to another, SAFELY, is quite the task, and takes a reasonable amount of skill. If you're ready for that type of a challenge, then the Award Winning product, Airliner Pilot is for you! In their continuing quest to offer the simmer new and unique challenges, the folks at Just Flight have developed this product for the "mission oriented" simmer. With airliner Pilot, you start at the bottom and work your way up through the ranks, from

Junior First Officer, Senior First Officer, Captain, and finally, attaining the rank of Training Captain. To attain these promotions, you must complete a set number of flight hours, number of flights, and not crash your aircraft! The last is fairly obvious! Experience and difficulty levels can be set to accommodate your own level of sim experience. Three career modes are also offered; regular, short, or extended. In other words, a more realistic progression through the ranks, a shorter ladder to climb to get to Training Captain, or the mode where you have all the time in the world to spend on your sim! I chose the regular mode of progression, and this seems to be a good pace for me. You make your own choice!

The aircraft you will be flying are the Dash 8-300 which is a slightly scaled down version of the Phoenix simulation's Dash 8 Professional, i.e. the overhead has very limited functions, as does the panel, the Boeing 737-400 (MSFS default), 777 (default), and the 747-400 (default). As you progress you will be awarded with promotions and the chance to fly the bigger boys. The capability to import your own aircraft to fly in Airliner Pilot is made possible by the use of the utility "Custom Aircraft Import Tool". A set of import packs are already included in the product with more available from the official Airliner Pilot site a
www.airlinerpilot.com. These are not aircraft files, but are just what they're called, Import Packs. You must have the aircraft already installed in MSFS 2004. Custom Airport Scenery is handled in the same way. You can choose your own livery and have a unique airline name pasted to the aircraft, or use one of the six real world airline liveries that are provided. I kind of liked the look of "Farmboysim's Flight Sim's” on the side of an aircraft!

Within Airliner Pilot is a Flight Operations program which is like the boss, handing out your assignments. It covers all pilot admin functions, follows your career, provides flight assignments and plans, briefings, debriefings, evaluation of pilot performance, promotions and demotions (hence don't crash!), type ratings and assigns the aircraft that you will be flying. I told you it sounded like the Boss! The routes you will be assigned depend on where you chose your base of operations to be located. The following are your region choices; USA, Ireland/Great Britain, Germany, France, Europe South, Benelux - Scandinavia, and Austria - Switzerland. I went with the Austria - Switzerland base of operations, for I'm a mountain man at heart, and that region provides some awesome flying, along with some awesome challenges!

pilot for a commercial airline, you have to be prepared to fly whenever and wherever you are asked to. Flight Ops does not want to hear that you don't want to fly because it's cold, dark and wet! Get your butt in that aircraft and get those passengers to their destinations on time and safely! Which brings me to another very interesting facet of this add on. You will have points deducted for various reasons, like crashing (duh!), exceeding speeds for your particular aircraft, improper descent rates, etc. The auto pilot in the Dash 8 works well for the altitude, heading, and climb/descent rates, but I found that the airspeed hold was a little shaky, so I manually monitored my speed.

The initial flights are about an hour or so long, give or take, and once you start a flight, you must see it through. If you've just been "flying around" all this time on your sim, you will be surprised at how much there is to do while in flight! It's definitely not boring up there in front! You are constantly monitoring the flight of your aircraft, along with following the instructions from ATC. There's hardly enough time to get a cup of coffee! You may think that it will be quite the chore to have to sit through a flight from start to finish, but the time passes quickly, since you are actively engaged during the course of the flight, and before you know it, you're on final for your destination!

There are about 1500 flights that are available to fly within the program, which I think is pretty impressive, and will certainly keep you busy for a long time to come! These flights will range from regional hops to intercontinental flights. The flight plans cover everything that you need to know about your assignment, and can be printed out for your convenience.

There is an added piece of "avionics" called flight tracker that is displayed on your screen (and can also be hidden from view), which monitors your taxi, take off, flight, and landing times. It will display all waypoints, headings, and distances. This is sort of like the "little black box", and is watchdog over you and your flight.

There are a few set-up screens that you have to work through, nothing too laborious though, but I think one of the more important one's is the screen where you set your Career Mode, which was mentioned earlier, crash consequence, where you choose to fly the flight over, or start from scratch, (guess which one I chose!), difficulty level (guess again!), language settings, weather generator time out options, which is an external program. While assigning a flight and watching the weather generator countdown, the program is running in the background. Airliner pilot will stop waiting for the weather to be generated and start the flight when the countdown is at zero. This assures that airliner Pilot will go ahead and start even if there is a problem with the weather generation. Flight preparation time, and the flight date that you want to use, either system date or random is also displayed for your choosing here.

Like most quality add ons, there is an official Airliner Pilot site, where you can find additional liveries, import packs, forums, and a place where you can post your Pilot "Logs", showing others how many hours you have racked up and your ranking. I was surprised to see quite a few entries here, and the hours that some of these folks have tallied are incredible! There are some truly committed fans of flight simulation out there! The site can be reached at www.airlinerpilot.com and is worthy of a look!

I must admit, my flight time is erratic, for I am constantly trying to learn about new sim add ons, and keeping this site running, but I have found that I jump back into the cockpit a bit more often now, since I'm one of those "realism" junkies. Having an assignment/add on where, when beckoned by my wife for one reason or another, I must tell her that "I can't stop now, I'm in the middle of a flight and I have to finish it" is kind of fun too, but don't push it! (I'm not sure if she knows about the "pause" button or not!)

I can see why this add on is an award winner! I believe Airliner Pilot will be very popular, far into the future, even after FSX comes out! If you've been toying with the idea of joining a Virtual Airline, but are hesitant about what to expect, Airliner Pilot will serve as an excellent training tool for you! From start to finish, you have the responsibility that goes with working for a commercial carrier. Again, if you're like me, and you like to wander the skies aimlessly, this will be a great change of pace for you. I believe that in any hobby, especially flight simming, that a change of pace is sometimes good, just to keep you out of the so called rut! I bet you get hooked if you try Airliner Pilot, and if you are married, it's almost guaranteed that your wife will be a "flight sim widow"! Remember to keep that pause option a secret!

At £29.99 / € 44.95 / $ 44.99, this product isn't exactly cheap, but if you want quality, fun, and a challenge, Airliner Pilot is well worth the money! You just won't grow tired of the challenge! Isn't that why you're a Flight Simmer?

Here's the bait that will set the hook into you; there's a 14Mb demo version Airliner Pilot that you can try, to see if you have what it takes to make it in the commercial aviation field. Click Here to visit Just Flight and download the demo. They really should put a warning on products like these though, stating the fact that, add ons such as these can be very addicting! The product comes in a boxed version, with a well written manual that covers all the aspects of the add on, or you can download the product direct from Just Flight. A manual in PDF format is also supplied. The installation was a breeze. I feel confident in saying that when you try the demo version, you're going to want to buy the full product.

System requirements:
Flight Simulator 2004
1.7 GHz PC
Windows XP
32Mb graphics card
512Mb RAM
256 Mb RAM
290 Mb of free HD space
Monitor with 1024 x 768 resolution

So, in conclusion, I have only one word for this product. FUN!