FSAirlines

Hi,

I just discovered FSAirlines after having published a little comparative between all the economic sim for flight sim and I wonder how I missed FSAirlines. Just subscribed yesterday but I like a lot what I've seen so far. I don't have a complete knowledge of FSAirlines so I won't bother you with questions I'll probably answer myself (or via the wiki).

However, there's three issues I didn't manage to understand.

1- Flight Plans : I understand that VA routes are implemented with Flight Plans. You can restrict the route for specific aircraft types and even specific planes, for specific days. OK fine. Why is it mandatory to enter ETD and ETA ? 99% of the time, the pilot won't respect it because it's too much of a constraint. Even if it's not used as a constraint, the psychorigid guy sleeping inside me is shouting his pain seeing random schedules in the routes list.

2- Fleets : I read the wiki and it shows how it works, but not why. I don't fully understand the interest of splitting its fleet into separatate chunks. Is it to allow different base location ? For example, my company will have a base location in France, Canada and New Zealand. Is it why fleets are needed ?

3- Planes : I wanted an A320-200 and didn't find one in the Buy market but I saw I can "order" one from the old plane list. Can somebody explain this feature for me ?


A last point, we can see a changelog in the wiki, and it could push away new users because it stops at 1.2.0 in 2019. One can believe FSAirlines is abandoned.

I'll keep on discovering this tool but one proof I like it is I'm already Platinum in my free try period

We used to have a bigger team here, but many of those who worked on the site have moved on, so now its just me. Since the team is smaller the Wiki is one of those things that has suffered, normally I use the forum to communicate and don't update the wiki as often.

As to your questions.

1) It is true, they don't really do anything except that real world route plans always have them, so we show them on the flight plans but they are just cosmetic. Why mandatory? Good question, they just always have been.

2) Fleets originally were a way to organize aircraft into groups and limit which aircraft a pilot can fly, so they can fly from some fleets but not others, it has been enhanced over time so they can just about be a mini airline within an airline, A pilot can manage one fleet, have there own budget but can't modify the aircraft in other fleets.

3) When you order aircraft the system will 'find' the aircraft you want and make them available for you, it takes a little time, up to 2 days, then it will make them available for you to buy. Aircraft arrive on the market when airlines fold or when they decide to sell some of their aircraft. there is also a script that adds a few every day.

Maybe I should remove the client change log from the wiki, I normally post changes on the forum.

A few years back I posted some tutorial video's on using FSAirlines and the features that were available at the time. They are somewhat antiquated at this point as the system has been updated with many new features since, so it looks like I need to get busy and make some new ones. You can find those video links in the "Getting Started" topic in the forum.

My problem with that is I am one of the few (and the proud) that has not bitten the MSFS pill and I still and will use good ol FSX. So what I may show on the screens may not always apply however, Joe has worked very hard to make FSAirlines compatible with many sim formats including X-Plane, P3D, FSX as well as the new Microsoft Flight Simulator.

I simply refuse to throw more money into my simming when what I have works. I do not need to see my mailbox from the air in the sim, nor do I have the internet speed required for MSFS and I'm not changing just to play what is essentially a video game. Call me stubborn but oh well. LOL

"Ain't broke, don't fix it"

Well said Cat.

Still an FSX fan with no huge intent (or cash) to buy a whole new PC in order to upgrade the sim.

Thank you for the answer @joefremont. I'll put 0000 for ETD and ETA.

Cat, I don't really get your point. What question are you answering to ?

Hi Sam, Glad your keeping up faith with FSX, if it still works for you great.
I used with FSX for a while, with all its warts.

But then Lockheed picked up the flag in P3D and kept developing the FSX code base and in my opinion fixed most of its issues to where it was much more stable, but of course required more hardware. The familiarity of using FSX with much better performance.

Finally M$ came back with MSFS, graphic wise it is far above FSX/P3D but has its own issues. After having seen the graphics its hard to go back, but I have not fully gotten used to it so I don't fly as much as I once did.

Right now about 60% of our recorded flights are MSFS, FSX and P3D are about half what they were 2 years ago and X-Plane is down 25%. That P3D would go down so much did not surprise me, its users had already shown they were willing to jump from FSX to something more modern, but I did not expect FSX to drop so much.

I have heard rumors of a P3D v6 in the works, and knowing Lockheed they will keep it an absolute secret until its ready to release, interesting to see what they will come up with, if they can match the MSFS scenery with the familiarity and backward compatibility of FSX then they may have a winner. But if they do an 'X-Plane 12" upgrade that was not really much of an upgrade then I will be quite disappointed.

And like Zissiz, I am not sure how this topic turned in this direction, but its not a problem.