For me it's pretty easy, because at my peak I was flying once or twice a week on scheduled airlines for ten years straight. To make sure I didn't get shorted on FF miles, I kept a log and noted the legs, mileage between, airline, and aircraft flown. I usually recreate those flights.When I fly GA aircraft it's a bit simpler. I tend to pick those routes that give the most scenery variety enroute in the 45-60 minute timeframe I like to use for such flights... Examples might be Tahoe to Reno, which I like flying in the Carenado Beech, or in Reno to Minden, etc.... Switzerland is a joy to fly in because of all the scenery variety crammed into one tiny country. When I want to fly GA "Oceanic", I'll often fly from the Emerald Isle to England, or from England into France.Here's a list of my five favorite GA routes:Bishop-RenoZurich-MilanSan Juan-St. ThomasJuneau to almost anywhere on the Alaskan Coast...Vancouver-Chilliwack-John

If I'm going to fly commmercial, I go here: http://www.flightarrivals.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/Flightsand find an arrival flight at a city of interest. I also use Ultimate Traffic to generate a pdf time table of any airport and choose an appealing flight.Todd

I always fly from the airport i last landed from, and started from my home airport, KORD, i also fly in real time and at the real times, taking into account time difference, i always try to find the earliest flight because i love early morning flights. So far in FSCOF i did, KORD-KLGA-KIAH-KPHX-KIAH-KORD, next im thinking of maybe CO 737 to miami or SAS A340 to EKCH.adam

TomI think your choice of singer just says it all especially if one is to consider her last video.This give me an idea for a thread.Wycliffe

Another thing I'd like to do (like John Ci) is if I am going on holiday to see my parents or if I have a business trip, I recreate those flights.

>I like to fly short flights in smaller planes. I find some>entertainer that is on tour and fly them to each destination. >For example, if you go to britneyspears.com they show her>current tour schedule. Fly her or her roadies and equiptment>to each stop. Remember, you don't have to like the group,>just the cities in which they are appearing. >>-TomThat's exactly what I do. I picked up Britney Spears in Chicago and flew her to LA. Somehow we ended up over the Atlantic Ocean. I'm not sure how that happened. Then we had a sudden decompression and actually one of the cabin doors came off! I managed to make an emergency landing in Atlantic City but, and this is really sad, it seems that no one in the cabin was wearing a seat belt. Oh well. Too bad. huh? Well I'm off to the casino!

Intersting topic.The first thing I do it login to DUATS and take a quick look at the weather depiction map. I look for the areas within a 1-2 hour range of my last location that have the worst weather. After I pick a few possible destinations, I cross reference realistic company routes with actual metar reports to select the most realistic / worst weather location I can fly into.Simulator flights are so much more rewarding to me when I have to handfly an approach in difficult weather./D

I've written a spreadsheet that randomly selects a flight from the Oneworld and Star Alliance timetables. I can enter limits to how long the flight will be and the type of aircraft to choose from. Every time I fly, I just enter the airport I landed at last and it pops up the flight details for my next flight based on my criteria.I have to regularly enter the data from the timetables when I visit a new airport, but I wrote a macro that automatically converts the html clipboard from the electronic timetable to something I can use in Excel. Last night I flew QF001 from YSSY to VTBD - right now I'm doing Thai 662 from VTBD to ZSPD... Once my spreadsheet had me on the Cairns/Narita/Cairns leg for a few nights in a row (even though I had not set any time conditions to limit it to just that flight) - I certainly learnt the route pretty well!Cheers,Bryn.

I like to fly over scenic areas so I tend to actually do a bit of research on national parks and other things of interest along the planned route. On the other hand, the Pacific NW always works... :-lolAvailability of good VFR scenery is also something I take into account but with addons like UT, BEV, accurate landclass etc. this is becoming less of an issue.

Excellent Discussion!!!I second the opinion of EISN above ... a VA is a great way to organize your flying. I do Globe Cargo for those long Polar Air Cargo segments ... and another great VA ... Singapore VA ... part of the Flying Tigers Group ... so I can fly Singapore segments ... and many many many others ... Lufthansa, Cathay, Delta, ... the list goes on and on. A VA is a great way to go ... just pick a route and fly it. Long, short, regional, ....great to me!!!In the past I have flown around the world a number of times .. clockwise, counterclockwise .... every continent .. zig-zagging .. flying mostly commercial airliners 300-800 nm segments. twice around the world with PS1.3 for instance.. Have logged hundreds of thousands of miles doing that ... great for geography ... you can look at the CIA world fact book or whatever and learn about the exotic places you fly. ... ever visit Punta Arenas? Manado? Irian Jaya? so many places to visit. French Polynesia, Fiji, Samoa, Vanuatu, ... the list goes on and on ...For GA I have done and am doing intermittently, a counterclockwise around north america ... little airport to little airport ... Started at Norwood Airport (KOWD) and up through Maine and the Canadian Maratimes ... across Canada ... now in Bellingham WA ... ready to fly down the west coast a bit at a time, short hops, not organized ... just get out the map, hop in and take off ..Lots of ways to go .. Cheers, Paul BenoitKSAN

Tim,Talking about approaches...I have the complete georender scenery and some others in the Seattle area. I've replaced ILS approaches this flying a 172 inbetween trees with little room for over shooting the threashold. I rarely fly anything big because I dont like to spend more than half an hour on a flight. So I love the short hops in a single. Also with so many great addon scenery files out there its hard fly into default airports anymore. Aside from Seattle I love flying in New England with the PVD scenery.To answer the question of how I choose my flghts I would say an airport I havent visited in awhile that is addon.Kilstorm

Howdie Folks,This thread really caught my eye and is developing into a discussion that many readers will be interested in. To that end i have posted a a short news story and link to it on the frontpage. keep the suggestions coming!!RgdsAidi http://www.avsim.com/pages/0100/avsim_sig.jpg

Hey Guys,I use the following site, its really good for picking random flights. I then use FSBuild to find the route and away I go...Check it out at :- http://www.fsdestinations.com/index.phpCheersDrayton

What I do depends on what I feel like flying at the time. I find that virtual airlines are a big help in giving a sense of "purpose" to my flying.- Jetliner: I belong to Delta Virtual Airlines (http://www.deltava.org). So if I feel like dragging my Dreamfleet 727 out, I'll cruise the Delta schedule (either the VA schedule or the real Delta timetable, either is acceptable) and find a flight that would be good for the 727. It might be a flight that uses a 737 or CRJ or MD-88 or even 757 in real life, but the rules of the VA let me fly it using a 727 and report the flight. Maybe I'll look at DVA's message boards to see where other people are talking about flying, or just pick a route that I've never flown before, or even fire up Servinfo and see where there is ATC on VATSIM, and fly there. And if I want to fly something slower, I also belong to DC-3 Airways (http://www.dc3airways.com), who fly nothing but--surprise--the DC-3 and DC-4. It's a nice change to go from a fully-automated FMC at FL350, down to grinding a DC-3 through the clouds at 8000 feet with nothing but a couple of VORs to navigate with.- Bizjet: There's a few VAs out there that fly corporate jets; I belong to Executive Jet Virtual, which is based out of Scottsdale, AZ (KSDL) and flies a variety of corporate jets up through the Boeing BBJ. Flying corp jets can be fun because it takes a lot of the same IFR skills as the big iron, but they go more varied and interesting places.- General aviation: One of the neatest things I've found is called FSEconomy (http://www.fseconomy.com); they have a forum just down the page here on AVSIM if you want more info. It's a little application and webpage that let you simulate running your own aviation business; you rent airplanes and take "jobs" flying passengers and cargo around, trying to make money at it. The program and webpage keep track of your income, deduct your expenses for fuel and rent, etc. Make enough money at it and you can buy your own plane or even start your own FBO. It's neat to go through and dig up a good-paying job, then get the job done flying into a small airstrip and see the virtual dollars accumulate. Sometimes I'll also fly online with the guys in the Margarita Air Club (http://www.margaritaair.com).- Bush: Another fun place here on AVSIM is Bush Flying Unlimited (http://bfu.avsim.net). People post "jobs" in the forum, you just take the job, fly it, and then write up a pilot report with screenshots. Anybody can post and fly jobs. Bush flying is HUGE fun...the Northwest, Alaska, Canada, even the Caribbean and New Guinea, they're all very challenging and gorgeous places to fly.Lewis "Moose" GregoryRichmond, Virginia

This is a super discussion. I have a somewhat different method of flying that you might find interesting.First, all of my addon scenery files are stored in a special directory structure. The files are organized by country. For example - zzBELGIUM Brussels Natl Zaventem Brussels (EBBR) Buysen. This puts all the Belgium airports together. Note: The "zz" ensures that packages that have already been installed "stay in one place." When you add a new package via an automatic installer (some authors insist upon it - ARRRRGGGG)it stands out like a sore thumb from the remaining packs. I manage my scenery.cfg file the same way using a small utility to renumber the sections.Anyway, when I'm ready to fly, I pick a country and, using a world map, choose a routing to fly to one or more airports for which I have packages. So, I might fly a small plane from a GA-based airport to a large or medium sized airport, change to a larger aircraft for the next leg, and proceed from there. This gives you the chance of flying different aircraft into differing sized airports and seeing the varying country-side as you fly. You can even go from VFR to IFR inside the same country. In addition, I use real weather so I often encounter several changes along the way.So, I take the "tour" of various countries and use a variety of aircraft to fly routes. With over 650 individual airports plus a number of regional airport packages there is a lot of diversity and a whole bunch of really cool flying.fb