... and I loved every minute of it! It all started out as a short and routine one hour hop from Terrace (CYXT) to the 108 Mile Airport (CZML) with the 737-600 and 82 passengers aboard. It was a grizzly fall day in the Pacific Northwest. Rainy, windy and somewhat foggy, but still safe for flying, since we left the approaching thunderstorms behind us. When we took off the sun already began to set and the air at cruise levels was surprisingly nice and calm. Everything was normal and the engines were serenely buzzing away behind me...But then, 20 minutes into the flight it happened: at first the right GPS unit gave out, raising some flags on the F/Os PFD. The QRH wasn't of much help in that situation, but I figured that we should be fine with only one GPS unit and the redundancy of the IRS and radio navigation. I slaved the F/Os PFD to the left unit and everything was fine again, or so I thought. Five minutes later, in the middle of a turn onto the next airway, the calming buzz of the engines was interrupted by the shrill noise of the autopilot disconnect horn. I immediately reached for the controls to maintain the turn manually and at the same time, assuming an autopilot malfunction, I reached for the CMD buttons to see wether I could engage the B system. That's when I noticed that the F/O's instrument illumination had gone dark. Sure enough, when I checked the overhead panel I saw that we had a failure of electrical bus #2, effectively putting the autopilot and the flight director out of commission. Luckily we still had our navigation, even though the right IRS was also affected by the power loss.Again, the QRH wasn't of much help and simply suggested that we should head for the nearest possible airport and land. Easier said than done. Returning to Terrace wasn't an option, because the thunderstorms surely had reached it by now and there weren't many airfields around that were suitable for a 737-600 with problems at night. However, I've been to the 108 Mile Airport before and knew the area quite well, so the decision was made to press on and fly the remaining 35 minutes of our route manually. Not knowing what the exact fault in our electrical system was I started and connected the APU, just in case it was of some help. I sure didn't like the illuminated BAT DISCHARGE light on the electrical panel...I managed to fly the route manually all the way to our destination without incident but when I was on final approach I realized to my dismay that heavy fog had rolled in (even though the weather report had said otherwise) reducing visibility to half a mile! It also didn't help that I was distracted by the flap indicator not working and that I had to confirm the extension of the flaps and slats visually after fiddling around with the alternate flap system. Guided only by the LNAV route and the vertical deviation indicator on the ND I attemped the landing but came in too high and had to go around. On the second attempt, fearing that I was coming in too high again I reduced the throttle to idle too soon and almost stalled, I could only prevent hitting some trees in front of the runway by slamming the throttle forward violently. By now my hands were pretty sweaty and I figured that we were running out of time. If the electrical failure really was a extensive as I feared it could be, we could run out of standby power soon and possibly lose hydraulics. I took a deep breath, turned the bird around and finally, after two missed approaches, set the aircraft down on the runway safely, with the reverse thrusters howling in protest. Phew!Thank you PMDG! And thank you, random failure generator!

Brilliant!

Nice, which failures did you have in the fmc? Just out of curiosity.

Bravo!

Nice report! I´m looking forward to get my hands down onto that bird.

... and I loved every minute of it! It all started out as a short and routine one hour hop from Terrace (CYXT) to the 108 Mile Airport (CZML) with the 737-600 and 82 passengers aboard. It was a grizzly fall day in the Pacific Northwest. Rainy, windy and somewhat foggy, but still safe for flying, since we left the approaching thunderstorms behind us. When we took off the sun already began to set and the air at cruise levels was surprisingly nice and calm. Everything was normal and the engines were serenely buzzing away behind me...But then, 20 minutes into the flight it happened: at first the right GPS unit gave out, raising some flags on the F/Os PFD. The QRH wasn't of much help in that situation, but I figured that we should be fine with only one GPS unit and the redundancy of the IRS and radio navigation. I slaved the F/Os PFD to the left unit and everything was fine again, or so I thought. Five minutes later, in the middle of a turn onto the next airway, the calming buzz of the engines was interrupted by the shrill noise of the autopilot disconnect horn. I immediately reached for the controls to maintain the turn manually and at the same time, assuming an autopilot malfunction, I reached for the CMD buttons to see wether I could engage the B system. That's when I noticed that the F/O's instrument illumination had gone dark. Sure enough, when I checked the overhead panel I saw that we had a failure of electrical bus #2, effectively putting the autopilot and the flight director out of commission. Luckily we still had our navigation, even though the right IRS was also affected by the power loss.Again, the QRH wasn't of much help and simply suggested that we should head for the nearest possible airport and land. Easier said than done. Returning to Terrace wasn't an option, because the thunderstorms surely had reached it by now and there weren't many airfields around that were suitable for a 737-600 with problems at night. However, I've been to the 108 Mile Airport before and knew the area quite well, so the decision was made to press on and fly the remaining 35 minutes of our route manually. Not knowing what the exact fault in our electrical system was I started and connected the APU, just in case it was of some help. I sure didn't like the illuminated BAT DISCHARGE light on the electrical panel...I managed to fly the route manually all the way to our destination without incident but when I was on final approach I realized to my dismay that heavy fog had rolled in (even though the weather report had said otherwise) reducing visibility to half a mile! It also didn't help that I was distracted by the flap indicator not working and that I had to confirm the extension of the flaps and slats visually after fiddling around with the alternate flap system. Guided only by the LNAV route and the vertical deviation indicator on the ND I attemped the landing but came in too high and had to go around. On the second attempt, fearing that I was coming in too high again I reduced the throttle to idle too soon and almost stalled, I could only prevent hitting some trees in front of the runway by slamming the throttle forward violently. By now my hands were pretty sweaty and I figured that we were running out of time. If the electrical failure really was a extensive as I feared it could be, we could run out of standby power soon and possibly lose hydraulics. I took a deep breath, turned the bird around and finally, after two missed approaches, set the aircraft down on the runway safely, with the reverse thrusters howling in protest. Phew!Thank you PMDG! And thank you, random failure generator!

Simply amazing. I can't wait until something similar happens to me.

Nice one Patrick, and nicely reported too - thanks.

Very nice. Sounds like this is the sort of flying and sim functionality/performance is what PMDG set out to accomplish. They have far exceeded expectations.

Thank you!Yeah, flying with random failures certainly takes a whole lot of the predictability out of the sim, making it feel more real. I'm pretty sure I made a ton of mistakes during this emergency but it's cool to come out of it "alive" in the end regardless.

Nice, which failures did you have in the fmc? Just out of curiosity.

MAIN BAT FAIL and AC XFR BUS 2 FAIL

... and I loved every minute of it! It all started out as a short and routine one hour hop from Terrace (CYXT) to the 108 Mile Airport (CZML) with the 737-600 and 82 passengers aboard. It was a grizzly fall day in the Pacific Northwest. Rainy, windy and somewhat foggy, but still safe for flying, since we left the approaching thunderstorms behind us. When we took off the sun already began to set and the air at cruise levels was surprisingly nice and calm. Everything was normal and the engines were serenely buzzing away behind me...But then, 20 minutes into the flight it happened: at first the right GPS unit gave out, raising some flags on the F/Os PFD. The QRH wasn't of much help in that situation, but I figured that we should be fine with only one GPS unit and the redundancy of the IRS and radio navigation. I slaved the F/Os PFD to the left unit and everything was fine again, or so I thought. Five minutes later, in the middle of a turn onto the next airway, the calming buzz of the engines was interrupted by the shrill noise of the autopilot disconnect horn. I immediately reached for the controls to maintain the turn manually and at the same time, assuming an autopilot malfunction, I reached for the CMD buttons to see wether I could engage the B system. That's when I noticed that the F/O's instrument illumination had gone dark. Sure enough, when I checked the overhead panel I saw that we had a failure of electrical bus #2, effectively putting the autopilot and the flight director out of commission. Luckily we still had our navigation, even though the right IRS was also affected by the power loss.Again, the QRH wasn't of much help and simply suggested that we should head for the nearest possible airport and land. Easier said than done. Returning to Terrace wasn't an option, because the thunderstorms surely had reached it by now and there weren't many airfields around that were suitable for a 737-600 with problems at night. However, I've been to the 108 Mile Airport before and knew the area quite well, so the decision was made to press on and fly the remaining 35 minutes of our route manually. Not knowing what the exact fault in our electrical system was I started and connected the APU, just in case it was of some help. I sure didn't like the illuminated BAT DISCHARGE light on the electrical panel...I managed to fly the route manually all the way to our destination without incident but when I was on final approach I realized to my dismay that heavy fog had rolled in (even though the weather report had said otherwise) reducing visibility to half a mile! It also didn't help that I was distracted by the flap indicator not working and that I had to confirm the extension of the flaps and slats visually after fiddling around with the alternate flap system. Guided only by the LNAV route and the vertical deviation indicator on the ND I attemped the landing but came in too high and had to go around. On the second attempt, fearing that I was coming in too high again I reduced the throttle to idle too soon and almost stalled, I could only prevent hitting some trees in front of the runway by slamming the throttle forward violently. By now my hands were pretty sweaty and I figured that we were running out of time. If the electrical failure really was a extensive as I feared it could be, we could run out of standby power soon and possibly lose hydraulics. I took a deep breath, turned the bird around and finally, after two missed approaches, set the aircraft down on the runway safely, with the reverse thrusters howling in protest. Phew!Thank you PMDG! And thank you, random failure generator!

Amazing. Great job Patrick

Patrick-A few nights ago Paul was flying the NGX into KATL while doing some testing... and during a CATIII approach at about 100' the right IDG failed...Paul's description of "wondering if it was the whole engine or just the idg for a moment" had me walking on air- because Paul is a highly experienced maintenance guy whoe really understand airplanes- and he has been my right hand throughout all of the failure mode planning/implementation and testing...So knowing that he got a failure that raised the excitement level of a complicated approach was validation that we succeeded with it. Funny thing is- I've been flying this thing all over the place in development and testing and I haven't gotten a single failure yet... i'll have to keep trying.

RobertYou should submit a ticket for that......LOL

very nice post :) made me chuckle at the end... ha

The only failures I've gotten are the ones where I broke something, sounds fun though!

Funny thing is- I've been flying this thing all over the place in development and testing and I haven't gotten a single failure yet... i'll have to keep trying.

Raising the random failure rate to 10 failures per 10 hours should do the trick. With that rate most flights go uneventful or at least with only minor glitches that don't affect the flight, apart from adding some spice to it. It's fun!