I love doing long haul flights, since I cannot be a pilot in real life it allows me to feel like one in the sim world. I fly the 747 (when fsx isn't crashing constantly) on routes up to 10-14 hrs once a month or so. I really enjoy it. I do not sit there the whole time, I take breaks, read, watch tv, laundry, even go out for lunch and run errands. Come back and look out the virtual window, check the systems, look at the fmc, step climb, change fuel pumps, etc. Everything you do in real life to fight boredom. I have a fun time doing it, gives me a sense of accomplishment to takeoff and land. I have never touched time acceleration and never plan to. The fun for me is to simulate the real life of a long haul cargo pilot. Most of my flights are 3-5 hours though, maybe a hop from ANC to ONT in the UPS 747F, nice 4.5 hours. I will spend a relaxing weekend doing a flight like that and love every minute of it.I think everything gets boring, a job doing anything can do that. But being a pilot you are lucky to do something most people only dream of. And for the most part get paid comfortably. You can probably fight boredom by telling yourself you are actually being paid to do that, look out the window and enjoy the view in your office

I own a Cirrus as well... my wife and I fly all over the country and the one thing I've found that keeps us from getting bored is the XM Radio that comes with the XMWX subscription... it's a godsend on those long trips between the east and west coasts! She also brings her portable DVD player sometimes.. but I keep myself occupied a lot of times by taking lots of air-to-ground photos!- Alex

Nice. Let me know if you ever stop in Duluth, I work air traffic there. I've flown in the SR22 G1 aircraft, but yet to fly a G1000 cockpit. I'm afraid to ask for a fam flight nowadays, since they've been cutting people left and right.... :(

Hi Gary,If, as you say, you have never flown RW in your life, may I suggest that you take ONE flying lesson. Maybe it'll change your outlook on what's easy (or important, or fun, or boring etc.) and what is not !Kind regards, Bruno

Hi Bruno, for clarity, if I am not misreading your post; I never said flying was easy. I never said flying was boring. What I said was a paraphrase of a response received from an experienced individual experienced in both FS and real-world hence qualified to compare and comment in my opinion. Would I want to try it? No way. I especially find little about neither flying easy nor simming, realistically and as closely as possible duplicating aviation theory is not easy. I worked my behind off at this simulator stuff right down to Great Circle Navigation and using an E6B flight computer. I studied online ATC from two of the best in the business, a retired RW Controller and a then active Canadian Air Force Controller. They busted my chops large and trained me to the extent that they would have expected from a RW student. It was totally grueling and I often wonder why in the heck I ever subjected myself to the sometimes what seemed like torment of the two. I nearly had the entire A.I.P Canada memorized front to back. Not easy at all I worked my tail off for everything.I did take an introductory flight and found it very enjoyable. However I would never accept the bare minimum standard of legal piloting as in being a Private Pilot let alone some sport license. A private Pilot license here would realistically cost no less than $10,000 add instruments and night and multi engine and the rest of it and my butt wouldn

Here's my .02 cents on the boredom factor FS vs. real.When I did my first three legged cross county flight back in the late 80's I was real excited to get to be in the plane for the better part of the day. I started early in the morning and flew from Apple Valley, CA to Palm Springs, Palm Springs to Blythe, Blythe to Lake Havasu City, then Lake Havasu back to Apple Valley. While I only need full stop landings at three airports, I figured for good measure I would make it 4 airports.I can say that the last 1/2 of the trip was from Bylthe to Lake Havasu City to Apple Valley was extremely boring. Sitting in the cockpit by yourself for that many hours crusing at around 110 kts was not much fun, not to mention I was flying over desert the whole time with not much to see.Granted I am not an airline pilot and that was the longest trip I have ever flown alone in a small plane, regardless of that, it does get boring imho. I can't imagine being an airline pilot and doing the KLAX to KJFX or routes similar to that. I think that in a way it is like driving a car across country, only with a better view and 485 kts of cruise speed.As far as the sim goes I feel about the same. When I fly airliners I try to keep the flights to about 3 hours max, or if I am doing a longer cross country I will have 4 or 5 airports I need to land at along the way to break up the boredom of sitting and staring a screen. The last time I did a 9 hour flight was from Miami to Rio de Janerio. I flew the plane to cruise and then set a hold at a way point about 150 miles from my arrival airport in case I over slept, then went to bed. When I got up the next morning I was almost to the hold so I exited the hold and finished the flight. There is no way I would be able to sit in cruise for that many hours in front of a computer unless I had a bunch of airports to land at along the way. When i'm simming I need to keep busy or it get real boring for me. I try to not use time compression because I have screwed up flights doing it in the past and caused crashes and other things using it.

Yep, I usually avoid airliners, but if I fly them, I try to keep it under 2hrs, under 1 is better. And that's the reason I mainly fly GA. Flights under 1 hr are perfect. Usually a 150nm hop in the Duke or 200nm in the F1 Mustang.....

I also never use time compression, but after doing many many long 11+ hour flights have been doing more hops on the smaller size, from 1 - 6 hours.However, if I ever had the luxury of flying with these folks, I don't think I would ever be bored :(

There would be no time to be bored, I would either be laughing hysterically, or would constantly be trying to save the plane haha.Pilots can do things to entertain themselves though, see here.

The first video, while funny, wasn't real pilots. They're comedians. One of them is Russell Gilbert, so rest assured they are all well known Australian actors. One of them (Matthew Newton - son of Bert Newton) was recently in the papers for trashing his hotel room to the tune of $11,000. The second video is hilarious!

I must say I never use time compression lolEx. I flew with PMDG MD11 from Amsterdam to Panama, a good 9-10 hour flight(!)I do this: Fire up my MD11 with fuel, fmc, fspassengersX, take off, makes sure it reaches cruise level without problems.I serve drinks, food and movies for the passengers.I then do either:A. Go to the local gym were I work out for 2-4 hours. (I've been drafted to the army, so I need to be fit.)B. Visit friends, familiy or my girlfriend.C. I sleep (My current job is from 0600 - 0745 (That's right, full payment for 1

The first video, while funny, wasn't real pilots. They're comedians. One of them is Russell Gilbert, so rest assured they are all well known Australian actors. One of them (Matthew Newton - son of Bert Newton) was recently in the papers for trashing his hotel room to the tune of $11,000. The second video is hilarious!

Hi Matthew,Of course I know they aren't real pilots haha. Just would be fun to fly with them, well then again, if one can trash a hotel room for that much damages then it probably isn't a wise idea to have them as my CP. I love that show and often catch clips here and there on youtube, the comedians in it are awesome! Wish I had that show here in the US.

I'd be useless as a real world pilot, since I get seriously bored as a passenger in anything longer than a half-hour flight. Like a couple of other people mentioned here, final approaches and landings are the busiest phases of flight, where the steepest learning curves occur, and so I pretty much limit myself to ten-minute or shorter flights, so that I can cut to the chase as it were, and maximize the number of approaches and landings per hour of flight sim. Even with such short flights however, there are generally enough waypoints to get in some FMS data entry practice, as well as time to set up for nice ILS landings and to run through complete flap schedules.Some of my flights between airports for which I have addon scenery are mini-hops between Heathrow EGLL, Gatwick EGKK and Stanstead EGSS, all in the London area. I also like that ridiculously short 5-minute flea-jump Hong Kong Chep Lak VHHH Rwy 7R to Hong Kong Kai Tak VHHX, via that IGS Rwy 13 checkerboard approach. I even saved the last 3 minutes of the VHHX IGS 13 finals just to be able to execute that sharp right turn repeatedly till I am blue in the face, and in varying weather conditions right up to the gale-force crosswinds of the Major Thunderstorm FS9 setting. On a good day I can average twenty short finals and touchdowns per flight sim hour. Bliss.RegardsTony Selario

When I was younger - I used to do the super long flights across the pacific. I would plot a course in FSNavigator, take off and go to bed. I would then set my alarm clock and wake up - and complete the approach. Since I am now married, and enrolled in a flight academy, I no longer need to do those flights. When I fly in the sim - I am usually doing a flight that I am actually going to do in my real world training. I find that by doing the work in the sim, I am better prepared for my real flight. Since I am working on my IFR ratings - it helps do go over comm's and procedures, or at least I seem to think so. Bottom line is that cruise flight is very boring. Occasionally, I'll get lucky and have to change alt's or go around bad weather - which gives me something to do - but the brunt of the excitement for me is the departure and arrival phases of flight. I love flying in the western part of the country (USA) because the terrain is great to look at. But when Im flying from my home base in Atlanta to Texas - I want to kill myself with boredom.

We always get a stash of the days papers from the cabin to read over the atlantic. I always go to the terminal and get a magazine to read.I usually enjoy my latest copy of PC pilot over the atlantic, theres a certain irony there i think!Sim wise I dont do long trips, if im in the jumbo normally just get airborne fly around then shoot a few aproaches for an hour.But normally i fly some thing low and slow from real air, or something very fast and low through the hills like the skysim hawk or the excellent hawker hunter freeware from CBFS.cheersJon

ofcourse pilots get bored. thats why they each grab a laptop and talk about scheduling/rostering issues and argue about the same for a few hours...certainly passes the time...and the TOD :( (I'm sure thats never happened IRL). he he...couldn't resist.on the topic of sim rate, I ALWAYS fly with 8x or 4x sim rate on during cruise. Why? Unfortunately I work for a living and have a family...I'd rather be playing with the kids, getting out and about and actually doing my REAL flight lessons during those 11 hours rather than sitting in front of my pc. :) (no offense intendend to anyone). I always enjoy landings...esp when I check out my ACARS PIREP and I get a landing VSI of <100fpm (my record is -4fpm....I don't know how). Each to their own I guess. Pharoah

ofcourse pilots get bored. thats why they each grab a laptop and talk about scheduling/rostering issues and argue about the same for a few hours...certainly passes the time...and the TOD :( (I'm sure thats never happened IRL). he he...couldn't resist.on the topic of sim rate, I ALWAYS fly with 8x or 4x sim rate on during cruise. Why? Unfortunately I work for a living and have a family...I'd rather be playing with the kids, getting out and about and actually doing my REAL flight lessons during those 11 hours rather than sitting in front of my pc. :) (no offense intendend to anyone). I always enjoy landings...esp when I check out my ACARS PIREP and I get a landing VSI of <100fpm (my record is -4fpm....I don't know how). Each to their own I guess. Pharoah

They honestly could've been watching a movie on a DVD player. I have spoken with many airliner pilots that have confessed to this. Still though, its hard to understand how they over shot a destination by 100+ miles. I don't do that on a desktop simulator, even when Im having beers and having fun - really, really weird stuff!

I used to be a commercial pilot for a small air taxi operation. I flew everything from C-172's, C-205, Navajo, Beech Duke, Piper Seminole, Cessna Grand Caravan, L-19's & gliders for the air cadets, and several other smaller a/c... For me long cruise times say more then an 1-2 hours could often become quite boring. The worst I think I've done was doing mapping flights for forestry....flying the same heading for 30 minutes, doing a turn and flying another direction for 30 minutes, etc for 8 hours a day.....painfully dull.I can also be physically uncomfortable sitting for more then an hour or so...I found that my butt would be killing me after a couple of hours...I always enjoyed the IFR flights though, especially if I hand flew it the entire flight. Doing a well executed approach was always very satisfying.But like anything when you try to make a living at it, it can take some of the joy out of it. I spent about $50,000 on my training and after 4 years was making about $10/hour...and that was considered being well paid! Out of the 40 or so people from my flight class only about 5-10 ever got jobs that I know of, and maybe 1-2 are still flying today. The stats I read while in flight school was that only 3% of commcerial pilot graduates are still flying 3 years out of flight school. :(Would I do it again though knowing what I know now? Damn right I would! Best time of my life... :)

Interesting thread. Everyone enjoys FS for different reasons, so there will be many answers to this vexing question of boredom.Personally, I set up a flight, fly to altitude, then do something else. During the flight I'll check here and there to ensure everything is OK and come back to the computer a little bit before decent.Afterall, even in real flight the main hives of activity are preparation, flying to altitude and then decent and landing.Certainly, this is only for long haul fluights. Short haul is different as you are no sooner at altitude and it's time to start thinking of landing. Just my viewpoint, Iain