AVSIM Special Feature Screenshot Tribute to FS2002 Part 5

Up until the late nineteen sixties, air travel was still considered somewhat of a luxury, limited only to those able to afford it, but as the decade of the seventies began, it was apparent this was going to change. Aircraft companies like: Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, Bombardier, Airbus, Shorts, BAe, Embraer, Fokker, de Havilland, etc. had redefined the passenger airliner and as the number of airlines increased, so did the competition and along with this, reduced airfares. During the seventies, several new airlines opened and the older, better known airlines, were expanding their routes to include smaller cities (US domestic) as destinations and many of the larger airlines expanded to include international routes. In the United States during the mid-1980s, travel by air became nearly as commonplace as driving your car across town, as everybody was doing it. It was the former President Ronald Reagan that deregulated the airline industry, of which the intent was to open up the industry to competition and allow airlines to fly where they wanted when they wanted. One of the first noticeable changes to occur from this action were lower airfares.

The aircraft manufacturers, also answered the call or need for smaller short to medium range jetliners, so aircraft like the Boeing 737 and 727 became instant hits with airlines all around the world, while Douglas introduced their short-medium range DC-9 and BAe had their 4-engined 146. In later years, Fokker, deHavilland, and others released the regional size jetliners (25 to 40 passenger).

As the demand for access to air travel increased in the more rural areas of North America and Western Europe, so did the idea of developing low capacity aircraft, most being turboprops rather than jet or turbofans and the smaller Commuter airlines were appearing. Even former General Aviation manufacturers, Raytheon with its Beechcraft D1900 for example, developed aircraft in this size range.

Following in the footpaths of Boeing, other aircraft manufacturers like Douglas (later to be called McDonnell-Douglas), Lockheed, and eventually Airbus developed modern large capacity (300+ passenger) long-range jumbojets. One of my all-time favorites in this catagory has been the Lockheed TriStar or L-1011 and though it wasn't as popular with the airlines as were most of the others, the TriStar maintained an excellent safety record.

Starting in the late 1960s, Boeing aircraft put their entire company on the block when they developed the Boeing 747 (100/200 series) as they built this aircraft without any confirmed orders; but the 747 would become a world standard for long distance jumbo jets. Douglas never matched the Boeing 747 in size, but they did come close with their DC-10 tri-jet, though soon after its (the DC-10) entering into service, problems and accidents began occurring.

The DC-10 encounters problems...

Developed during the late 1960s, the history of the DC-10 in-service, was all in the 1970s & 1980s and it was on April 3, 1974 that a THY Airline DC-10 crashed outside of Forêt d'Ermenonville, France (no survivors). This would be the first of a series of accidents that would plague the DC-10 and in this case, an aft cargo door blew out in-flight and the subsequent decompression caused a failure of the flight controls running along the bottom of the fuselage. There would be at least two more similar accidents, but at a much lower altitude where there were no human losses. Another American Airlines DC-10 would have an engine and engine pylon separate during a takeoff roll in Chicago (no survivors) and there would be an elevator malfunction in another incident that seriously injured one flight attendant and would cause a fatality in another. In 1979, a United Airlines DC-10 suffered a catastrophic center engine turbine failure (#1 compression blade assembly) where the exploding parts severed the main tail flight control hydraulics. With 5 pilots in the cockpit, this aircraft made it to Sioux City, Iowa and attempted a landing onto the closed runway 22. Only able to maintain partial control by using differential power of the #1 and #3 engines, the flight crew got the aircraft to the runway, but as the aircraft came into the effects of ground cushion, control was lost and the aircraft rolled upside down into a corn field alongside the runway.

For a time, much was made of the DC-10 and its apparent problems, but what the accidents surrounding the aircraft showed was more the inadequacies of the FAA regulations and the procedures surrounding maintenance of these complex aircraft. I don't mean how these conditions apply to just the DC-10 either, but to all the aircraft types in all the airline fleets. With these huge and very powerful jetliners, came some very complex problems and sometimes—even a minor situation under the right conditions—could domino into a disaster. The high cost of operating an airline in today's world, where the domestic airlines have been deregulated, has created some of its own problems or at the very least potential problems. Reducing operating costs is always at the heart of the committee or management meetings at any airline and it seems that reducing maintenance costs has been at the top of everyone's list.

Boeing shares air transport leadership with Airbus

Today, Boeing has all but formed a monopoly on the medium to large airliners save for the serious competition they are now receiving from the European designed Airbus and despite some early on problems, Airbus has developed and sold a number of jetliner models that are becoming favorites among many of the world's airlines and passengers alike. To fill the need for a medium range aircraft, Boeing has designed the 757 and 767 widebody; then in the mid-1990s, Boeing introduced the 777 or Triple-7, as it is more commonly called. The Triple-7 is the first jumbojet certified for long-range ocean flights with two engines, but these are some engine, as the air inlet diameter on the 777 engines are almost equal to the fuselage diameter of the Boeing 737! On the other side of the pond, Airbus started with the 300 model, which had its first flight in 1972, and now has expanded up to the 4-engined 340. Purposed is the A380 double-decker, but so far interest has been lean for this truly massive aircraft.

In the 1960s, an Anglo-French consortium developed the Concorde, a supersonic jetliner that first flew in March of 1969 then entered service in late 1975 with Air France. Capable of cruising above MACH 2.0, the Concorde became and instant classic. To demonstrate its speed, a preproduction model was flown from Boston Logan to Orly (Paris) and timed to depart Orly at the same moment was an Air France Boeing 747. The Air France B747 was headed toward Boston Logan, while the Concorde flew to Orly, stayed 68 minutes on the ground and then returned to Boston Logan, arriving 11 minutes ahead of the Air France 747! After nearly 30 years in-service, the Concorde is only now being retired. (British Airways and Air France have announced that all Concorde flights will cease by October of 2003, but Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Atlantic Airways, has expressed serious interest in purchasing the 7 Concordes currently owned by British Airways.)

Aviation technology continues to advance

In the years between 1971 and today, there were still aviation records to be broken and on December 14th, 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck Yeager) took off from the Mojave Airport near Edwards AFB and began a 9 day 3 minute and 44 second flight around the world, nonstop, and without refueling. Dick and Jeana covered 24,986 miles during their record-breaking trip and this, the last of the great aviation records to be broken, was an achievement that earned them the Collier Trophy. The Voyager aircraft was designed and built by Dick's brother, Burt Rutan, and is a modernistic composite aircraft capable of holding 7,000 lbs of fuel in its 17 separate fuel tanks. As with all aircraft that have been a milestone to American or World Aviation History, the Voyager currently hangs over the lobby of the National Air & Space Museum. With thanks to FS aircraft designer, Al Kaiser, you too can try your hand at an around the world flight in Flight Simulator with his version of the Rutan "Voyager" for FS2002!

On April 12th, 1981, the American Space Shuttle "Columbia" became the world's fastest and highest flying winged aircraft ever, as it achieved 17,000+ mph and reached a low orbit altitude of 137 miles as it broke the speed-altitude record set 22 years earlier with the X-15. The Space Shuttle "Columbia" and her crew of 7 were lost earlier this year (February 1st) from a plasma leak during reentry leading to the breakup of the Columbia over the Southern United States. On January 28th, 1986, the Shuttle "Challenger" was lost from an orbiter explosion caused by a plasma leak around an SRB (Solid Rocket Booster) "O" ring, during a cold weather launch. As with Columbia, the Challenger explosion, 72 seconds after liftoff, took the lives of 7 astronauts. Though not what can be ruled a huge success, the Space Shuttle has nonetheless proven the possibility of using a reusable aircraft for space travel. In a high-point of the Space Shuttle, on October 29th, 1998, American Mercury Astronaut John Glenn returned to space on the Space Shuttle Discovery. It had been since February 20th, 1962 when John Glenn had last been in space, flying his Friendship 7 Mercury space capsule for three orbits of earth.

Launching a space orbiter as large as the Shuttle from sea-level, then slamming it back into the atmosphere at 17,000 mph does work, but the costs are enormous, both in lives and dollars. Burt Rutan (of Voyager fame) has rolled out his working design for a space-aircraft that is launched from the back of a high flying mother aircraft (already up and flying, the aircraft "Proteus" will be the launch platform for these low orbit spacecraft) and then reenters the atmosphere at a very low speed and a very steep down angle, much as the X-15 did back in the 1950s. Burt's design and method of achieving low orbit seems very plausible and based on the data from the X-15 flights, it is very likely that Burt's space-aircraft will indeed work.

The technological advances made, directly from aviation and aerospace, have touched, in one way or another, every single human being on earth. No one knows what the future holds, but if it is anything like the last 100 years, we're all in for one heck of a ride!

You can, in FS2002, pick and choose just about any aircraft type or size you can imagine, even some of the best from the former Soviet Union, with which to fly your imaginary passengers to whereever you wish. The surprising thing has been the number and quality of FS airliners that have come out of the freeware arena, as it seems that just as soon as one team finishes a major project, another team or individual releases their work, leaving us flight simmers with our heads spinning! With the following, I have here only a sampling of what is available to the MS flight simmer! Many of these screenshot groups are presented without comment, but my hat goes off to those 3rd party designers providing many of the following as freeware, that have given so much to our hobby, and I dedicate the following to those ladies and gentlemen.

Sitting in front of the MSFS version of the National Air & Space Museum, we have a beautiful FS example of the Dick Rutan-Jeana Yeager "Voyager," an FS aircraft designed by Al Kaiser and available in the AVSIM library.

Just a couple of examples of the excellent models of the 737-200 available, including a sequence of shots showing a crosswind landing at Chicago's Midway airport.	Between the freeware designers Project Opensky and Meljet, your choices of outstanding examples of the Boeing Jets is overwhelming.	FS aircraft designers Project Airbus, Mike Stone, Harald Nehring, among others have providing several excellent Airbus designs.
Showing one of my true favorites, the Project OpenSky Boeing 747-100/200 in Delta Colors.	The turboprops are well covered for FS2002 and here we have an example (plus a couple of others) of the DASH-7 from Team 7 & Milton Shupe. At the top is one of those DASH-7s passing the Southwestern face of Mt. Everest (FS98 scenery addon).	The deHavilland DASH-7 or DASH-8, the Shorts360, or the Convair 340, so many aircraft so little time to fly.

Choices of the smaller regional jets are many, including models from Project Opensky, Project Fokker, and the Bravo-Zulu award winner, Bill Grabowski, and his ERJ145 panel with attached aircraft.

From several sources, there have been a large number of very excellent examples of the Russian aircraft, from the little AN-2 up to the giant AN-124, but I just love flying the Tu-144 Concordski (top).

Rather it be an Airbus, a Lockheed, a BAe aircraft, or something from Boeing, there's something for everyone in FS2002 aircraft downloads.

"Screenshot Tribute to FS2002" continues here:
Part 6: FS2002 Screenshots for the Cold War era