Here's an idea I've had for a flight sim project.  Fly to all the countries contained in this list - in the order of smallest populated country to largest populated country.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population

 

Rules are thus;

1.  If country has no suitable land based airport or heliport then it's not required to visit said country (e.g. Vatican City).

2.  Country must be landed at in proper fashion when visiting country (i.e. no ploughing of farmers field or forest felling with your plane).  You must use an airport/heliport.

3.  Aircraft used for transit flight must be suitable for the airport (i.e. you can't overrun the runway, or have wings clipping parked aircraft/buildings).

4.  You can only stop en-route to change planes if you have previously visited said country (e.g. when flying from Montserrat to Saint Pierre, you are not allowed to land in a larger Caribbean country with a longer runway to change upto a larger/faster aircraft).

5.  Aircraft used must be a representation of a real aircraft (e.g. you can't modify the V22 Osprey to have massive fuel tanks).

6.  It is only required to visit one airport per country, though more may be visited if you choose to.

 

With those rules there lie some interesting challenges.
1.  There's 242 countries, some of which are sequencially an enourmous distance to fly between said countries (e.g. Falkland Islands to Svalbard).

2.  Some countries only have a small runway to take off from (e.g. Montserrat has a 600m runway) and you have a large flying distance to the next country.

 

I have no idea if it is a technically viable project, which is one of the things that makes it interesting.  Aircraft of choice will mainly be a B777-200ER for the long haul flights, but I also need a STOL capable aircraft for certain long trips.  A C17 certainly has a STOL reputation, but probably not at the same time as carrying fuel for a long range.  Any suggestions for suitable aircraft?  Thinking that the solar powered plane in the news might be the only viable option for short runway/long haul flights.

I think you'd get away with the CRJ-200 on most short runways, but the BAE/Avro RJ series excel at this sort of STOL task, and have 4 jet engines to help the miles go by. There's a payware Avroliner out there which will do the job although it could do with a makover graphically.

Nevermind the airplane selections, I think this is a great idea for a fantasy flightplan. It will certainly require you to stretch your legs out over some huge distances, but also do some strong planning. Good luck on the adventure, whatever aircraft you choose!

I've now flown to all countries starting with the Cocos Islands, and have so far ended up flying to  Saint Barthélemy.

 

The experience has been interesting and varied.  Flying with the rules described above has demanded some very long trips in the Boeing 777, and the flight plans from say Cocos Island to Niue were far longer than I pictured in my head - 5500 miles in this instance.

 

The time occupied in real life however is actually quite small.  I often take off and reach cruise altitude, and then go to bed!  9 hours later I'm wide awake again and reaching the top of my descent path.  I suppose it demonstrates how stable x-plane is that you can go to sleep and X-plane doesn't crash!

 

Longest flight has been 16 hours from the Falkland Islands to the Svalbard Islands.  The distance was beyond the acceptable limits for the FMS to accept a VNAV profile, but nonetheless I landed at Longyearbyen with 20 tonnes of fuel remaining.

 

The toughest flight was ~3500 miles from Ascension Island to Montserrat.  Landing on a 610m long runway ruled out the Boeing 777 for this flight (crashed and burned on various prior attempts).  I needed something with short runway capability, and long range combined.   In truth, I found my only realistic option was to rely on some carrier naval support.  The first leg was done in sea harrier, however this is a tricky craft to land on a carrier, has a poor range, rather poor cruise speed, and no autopilot capability - so I couldn't leave it alone for long.  The default F4 phantom would have been a better option for speed and range, but again there's no autopilot and no "goto airport" Nav display - which makes an atlantic crossing somewhat difficult.  The answer lay in an addon F14 Tomcat, which had basic autopilot and a good cruise speed/range without needing the afterburner.    However it's tricky to land the bird on a carrier.  Last leg was done in the V22 Osprey.

 

Most Interesting flight was Montserret --> Saint Pierre and Miquelon --> Saint Barthélemy.  With the P180 Avanti V2 (the download with the glass cockpit), the flying legs of 1800miles were just about inside the range limit.  But to achieve this flight, you needed to dial in the max cruise altitude of 39000 feet.  It's a real struggle to achieve that altitude, but you need it to get the best fuel burn - that's how critical the range of the aircraft is.  It made me appreciate how close the aircraft is to its real world counterpart when it comes to max altitude / speed / range.  Landing at St Barts is also a challenge.  You have a choice between a very long threshold offset on a 640m runway, or a tight turn.  One mistake and you're another youtube accident video!

 

Next stop is Saint Barthélemy --> Nauru.  7500 miles, with a 640m runway take off.  My best option is to fly first to Saint Pierre in the Avanti and then use the 777 from there to Nauru.  That'll have to wait till I'm back from work assignment in a few weeks.