Flying the Same Route Over and Over

[Tim_Capps 474]

Just a discovery: I have been flying the same short route over and over with different airplanes in my collection. What I have found is that as I become familiar with a route I am able to concentrate on the airplane more, and trying for "points for style." I am enjoying my airliners -- especially the smaller guys -- more this way than the new-route-every-flight. An added benefit is that I can get a couple of flights in after work if I'm only going from St. Louis to Chicago. I'll still do the long-haul from time to time, and vary my short routes, but this has really re-sparked my enjoyment of FSX.

[Benjamin J 751]

Just a discovery: I have been flying the same short route over and over with different airplanes in my collection. What I have found is that as I become familiar with a route I am able to concentrate on the airplane more, and trying for "points for style." I am enjoying my airliners -- especially the smaller guys -- more this way than the new-route-every-flight. An added benefit is that I can get a couple of flights in after work if I'm only going from St. Louis to Chicago. I'll still do the long-haul from time to time, and vary my short routes, but this has really re-sparked my enjoyment of FSX.

It makes sense. If you know what to expect on your route, you can delve deeper into the plane you fly. It goes the other way around too: if you constantly fly the same plane and get familiar with it, you'll find that you'll be able to focus more on the route once you start varying those. Anyway, glad you have found more enjoyment in FS, that's what counts!

[briansommers 74]

yeah, when I used to fly the heavies back in the day (I fly GA bush stuff now) I would pick about 3 no more then 4 routes, print out all the charts and just do these over and over. That way, I could save myself hours of having to figure out route, print out charts, etc, etc. lot less paper work

[some1 65]

 That's also what I do. I also try to find the routes that can be flown with both modern and older planes, so with navaids coverage and SID/STARS that can be flown manually. Plus I like making a little statistics, how much fuel I've burnt and how long it took to fly the route with different planes. :(  

[BMG50 9]

Same here...I have been flying the same short flights in FSX as I do in the RW...Lou

[NGXfanatic 85]

Whenever I have a new aircraft that I am learning about, I make it a point to fly a short haul route (but not too short) that I have memorized the route, sid, star, etc to allow me to conentrate on the a/c systems and procedures. For me, its KPHL to KBOS.

[cmpbellsjc 2,960]

Yeah I used to do the same thing. Back in my FS9 days, when the PMDG 737 first came out I cant even imagine how many KPHX to KABQ flights I made. I used to fly that route back and fourth so much that I think I could even remember the name of the intersection waypoints along the way, lol. My gf would walk past me on the computer and ask "You flying to KABQ again?", me "Yes", her "Dont you ever get sick of flying the same route over and over?", me "NO!!".Then I developed a few other favs that I flew almost as often. KPDX to KSEA, TJSJ to TNCM, SBRJ to SBSP. I got to where I would do one of these flights almost daily and sometimes as a round trip if I had the time.Times have changed for me though. When FSX first came out and I switched completely to it from FS9, since there was a lack of 3PD airports for it, I began to fly to a lot more areas, and after all the years of my PHX to ABQ flights, I had actaully finally gotten bored of the same flight all the time.Now that FSX has been out for a while and I have accumulated some nice airports from FSDT and some of the other devs, I find myself always doing flights between only airports that I have addon sceneries for. Once you get used to good mega hubs that perform really well like the stuff FSDT has put out, I can't really bare to fly to the default airports any longer. But my days of doing the same route over and over are gone. I usually mix it up a lot more now and have even gotten into doing some trans-Atlantic flights since I bought the PMDG 747 a few weeks ago, granted I have to use 4 to 8x time compression for these, but I can still do a crossing in about 1.5 to 2 hours.

[NGXfanatic 85]

I've been into long hauls alot recently, but I cannot sit for the whole duration, I get exhausted just doing the preflight work. I cannot bring myself to do the time compression thing either. I basically fly the first half or quarter of the flight, and then save the flight, to be resumed later when I am more alert and refreshed. I make a note of the time/date I saved the flight so that I can use Active Sky Advanced to pull the historical weather for that time and resume the flight with pretty much the same weather as before. It is important to keep the continuity, it would suck to resume the flight with all new weather. And for the most part, I have an idea of what runway/weather to expect on arrival so I have planned the appropriate Star beforehand. Without saved panel states and historical weather, long haul's for me (at least realistic flights) are just not feasible, considering that the fuel loaded in preflight (using FSbuild or a/c specific fuel planners and TOPCAT) in conjunction with analysis of weather from ASA are the deciding factor on whether or not the a/c will arrive at the destination with the appropriate level of minimum or reserve fuel.

[PIC007 82]

I have 3 'canned' routes I use as a baseline for testing new planes, short (100mile), medium (300mile), and long(600mile). Once testing is complete, it's off to see new places. Flying the same route day in and day out is the exact reason I stopped flying for an airline decades ago, too boring and I got complacent. In FSX, 1.5 hours is my max flight, and normally it's around an hour. I fly in multiplayer a lot and anything longer than that and we start losing pilots.

[briansommers 74]

Same here...I have been flying the same short flights in FSX as I do in the RW...Lou

I'm interested in knowing what those routes are and with what a/c if you are allowed to share them....

[Ecosse_821 24]

I do this a lot. I like re-creating actual flights I've been on with the appropriate aircraft and routing, and getting used to the routes so that I already know the approaches, frequencies, runway headings, etc. When I want to test a new aircraft, I usually fly from Edinburgh, Scotland to Glasgow, Scotland. This flight is very short, almost all of it is takeoff, climb, descend, and land. When I want to go a little longer I'll do Glasgow-Dublin, or Glasgow-Manchester, or Dublin-Manchester. I also like to do Chicago-IL to Champaign-IL and back. Every now and then I'll throw in a Glasgow to Amsterdam or Reykjavik or something like that, and go to a new airport. That can be quite exciting, especially if I do it at night.