LAX to SYD and I've done it for real ( passenger )on Qantas 747's 6 times.

Just over 17hrs is my record, doing a delivery flight of a 737-800 from KBFI to YSSY for Virgin Blue in my VA. Obviously there were a couple of legs involved (PHNL and NFFN with hot turnarounds at each) and I didn't do it all in one go, but it sure was a long slog.To those who don't understand the long haul thing, to me it just an extension of the love of flying in the real thing. I've done YSSY to KLAX and return for real (pax) so many times I've lost count, and once I did a 40hr multi-leg flight from YSSY through Bangkok, Heathrow, Gatwick (by ground bus!) then to Atlanta and loved every woken minute of it. No matter how much I fly as a pax for real, I still find myself staring in awe out the aircraft window at the magic of flight for hours on end, just watching the endless variety of clouds, water, and landscape across the huge expanse of the world pass slowly underneath me. When I fly long haul in FS, I get a chance to experience similar feelings without having to leave the comfort of my computer desk chair. As has been said before, each to their own I suppose!Gary

I keep seeing people say they set the sim and go to bed. Come on, that doesn't count.How about asking in the thread, "What's the Longest you've flown when you've actually been AT THE COMPUTER while you fly it?"CYYZ - EGLL roughly 7.5 hours for me.

>I keep seeing people say they set the sim and go to bed. Come on, that doesn't count.

Hi All,I never fly anything longer than 1.5 hours. I usually speed up as much as possible. I can do realtime flights in the ATR if it is only for 100 nm.Why? I've got a spouse, a live and a job. ;-)If PMDGs new 747 does not speed up to 16x I'm not gonna buy it.Alex

>All I want to say is that I admire the real-life long haul>flight crews, yes yes very pretty A340-600 but hats off to>them for sitting in a seat like that for soooooooooooooooooo>long! If you were getting paid what they get paid for sitting on their date watching a few gauges you too would manage it somehow.Andy b

With FS98 I did some take off, engage auto-pilot, go to bed, wake up in the morning and land while doing a world tour but that was before I knew anything about avaition. Those days are long since gone because now I fly as real as I can. I see alot of post stating slewing or walking away from the computer. To each his own but I found a great little tool called FSFailure that really makes each flight (the cruise part) just as challenging as landing. With this you always have the element of not a perfect flight and every second could change your flight. This really helps cure the boring cruise especially if you dont fly auto pilot in a small ga. My best example of how great this tool or others like it are is that I was on a flight to Key West from Tampa in the Mooney and had an engine failure about 30 NM out of Key West with nothing but wate below. Found that by moving my Mixure I could keep the engine sputtering and the plane in the air. My flights are never more than 3 hours but I try to keep it to 1 hour.

8 hours for me a few years ago. I couldn't sleep one night and rolled out of bed, wide awake at 2:00am EST. I fired up my flightsim for a planned flight from Toronto to somewhere in Europe (can't remember exactly right now) and logged into Vatsim. Initially there was nobody online, but shortly after departing Toronto and to my surprise, someone came on as Toronto Center.As it turned out, he followed me the whole 8 hours, switching from center position to center position. Since we were both voice capable, we chatted about a great many things and worked on some FS software tweaking along the way. The only break was to make coffee. The funny thing was that I was checking in with every center position change and then we would carry on our conversation.Before I actually realized what the time was, he was already giving me vectors into the airport. It was 10:00am EST when we finally signed off.Definitely was one of the most fun and memorable flights I've ever had.Lawrie

Just a word on those "sleepers" (i.e. go to bed for some hours and then land the plane the next morning). I agree that each one should enjoy this game in his own way, but may I remind you that going to sleep in the middle of a very long flight is not that unrealistic: in real life, pilots take turns and some retire to the crew rest. So, if I do, for instance, SIN-LHR (approx. 13 hours) and I take a break of 6 hours, I consider this my "crew rest time". Of course, sometimes I cheat a bit in the sense that I take my rest time just when the plane "happens to" cross great stretches of water.Also, I would like to add that since the disappearance of AIMap in FS2004 cruise flight has become less entertaining. In the past, even when you did a 5 hour-long transcon JFK-LAX, it was entertaining to watch traffic around you. The same goes for other parts of the world, where my AIMap screen brought up planes that I had loaded on AI that I never saw at any airport. Just miss that little gauge so much...:(

I go out of my mind if the flight is longer than 5 or 600 miles. I don't get any satisfaction out of flying over the flight sim world- I like to see it up close, and land at as many airports as I can.One question- Somebody said they flew KBFI to YSSY- How do get across the Pacific? I thought it has a max range of 2000 miles or so? I can't seem to find anywhere to cross the ocean that would leave me will enough fuel?

With regard to the discussion of sleeping during the boring parts, and whether or not it simulates an actual long-haul crew rest period:I've often thought that it would be cool to create a utility that simulates a pilot's rest period by allowing him/her to walk back from the cockpit to a passenger seat. But rather than going to sleep, the pilot pulls out the personal video screen and watches a DVD. It seems like it wouldn't be so difficult to create an integration between the essentially static aircraft cabin interior and standard freeware DVD viewing software. Of course, the FS operator chooses the movie by supplying his own DVD in the computer's DVD drive.There might be computer resource issues, but I wouldn't think so, since you wouldn't need smooth scenery or gauge graphics while the DVD is playing, and vice versa.I don't have the time to create something like this, but if this little suggestion leads to someone creating something like this, perhaps it can be my small way of paying back for some of the cool add-ons and tips I've received here.

One question- Somebody said they flew KBFI to YSSY- How do get across the Pacific? I thought it has a max range of 2000 miles or so? I can't seem to find anywhere to cross the ocean that would leave me will enough fuel?As ResetMCPALT already mentioned, he did several stops, one in HNL, one in NAN - and maybe another additional one? The 737-800 has a max. range of 1990nm WITH LOAD OF 162 PAX - in other words, since you wouldn't squeeze 162 people in that plane but only have 2-3 for the delivery flight, range increases significantly. Let's assume to about 2700nm. In which case it works, by stopping in HNL, MAJ and NAN. Depending on what the range really was on that empty flight, one may even go directly HNL-NAN:http://gc.kls2.com/cgi-bin/gc?PATH=kbfi-hn...navy&MAP-STYLE=But maybe ResetMCPALT can tell us more about his flight, I'ld be interested as well.

If Im not mistaken - dont they sometimes fit auxilary tanks to deliver smaller jets like the 737 over huge distances? -----------------------------------------------Regarding ultra-long range flight crews:<< If you were getting paid what they get paid for sitting on their date watching a few gauges you too would manage it somehow. >>Oh yea money will talk :) but even then Id wuss out! As it is I cant handle long-range flights as a pax. But I love the takeoff, climb, approach & landing part! If a genie appeared and made me a real-life airline pilot I'd want to tootle around in a Fokker 50 or Dash 7 thumping down on grass strips and such - 10 times a day hee hee :)

>If Im not mistaken - dont they sometimes fit auxilary tanks>to deliver smaller jets like the 737 over huge distances? True, but here ResetMCPALT was talking about a flight in FS, which doesn't have aux tanks. So I simply assumed that he did not fiddle with the tank capacity in the aircraft.cfg. But that's just speculation.

My longest time flying, was 37 hours, without stopping except for bathroom breaks. My wife brought my food and coffee to me. Only put the aircraft on autopilot, to go to the restroom. After 37 hours, my wife made me go to bed, she got lonesome. ;-) If you do no use autopilot, plot your flight plan on FSNav, print out a copy, get all the charts, a 13"x19" printer makes fair copies... Make all altitude and heading, trim changes manually, etc. Follow high altitude airways, change course or altitude to avoid weather... Dim room lights so there is little lighting but the panel at night. Have the FS set for maximum realism, where you can have instrument or other malfunctions, and use your imagination, to make it more interesting. Always use Realtime, not doing so to me _would_ be very boring. It does not surprise me, when those who do not make it as real as possible, say they get bored. Most of the time I fly only Props, and the only Jet I ever fly, is the Eaglesoft Citation X, about 5-10% of my flights. My wife says, "You really get _into_ flying. Your body language looks like you are really banking or flying and moving."