For those that didn't know, Flight Aware has the ability to report every aspect of a route including it's accent/decent rates (I've heard this questioned asked before). For those looking to fly like the real airliners there's a wealth of info here. It's insightful to see how the various aircraft ascend to altitude and how far out and shallow the decent is to the destination airport. Note how Airbus's (A319/20) can climb out at rates of 3,400FPM, 737-700's climbing out of KMDW at 3,000fpm, and by comparison MD80's out of KATL climbing out at 1,980fpm. The step climbing with as little at +300fpm is interesting as well in the middle of the route.This link is an example for those interested:http://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAL124/...S/KATL/tracklog

Great stuff. I never realized how detailed flight aware was.

I need to put a bug in the ear of PMDG on their forum about this as their previous effort seemed a little underpowered coming out of KMDW (737-700). There's some pretty impressive climb rates coming out of KMDW. Southwest has flights pretty packed with passengers, luggage, and fuel to spare flying to destinations as far as KSAN (I know there's arguments as to many factors for performance but there's some consistency that can't be denied). Note the climb rate on a flight out of KMDW to KLAX. It's great to see data like this which shows all of us how various jets perform on average. We can then make an educated comparison to some extent as to what the FS model should be doing.