I have twice seen parked AI aircraft tip nose down, tail up and disappear completely into the ground like a duck diving into a pond.I've seen it happen twice now, once at Seattle and once at Schipol. I have downloaded the Project Afcad files from PAI, so there is potentially a link between the airports, but I'm guessing it's an aircraft causing the problem, not an airport.This happens very quickly on arriving at the airport from the "Create Flight" menu or when altering the AI percentage so that the AI scenery is refreshed. It's too quick to say what type of aircraft, but I can say that on both occasions it was a small, high tail commuter jet airliner. I'd hazard a guess at a CRJ 200 or something like that. The rest of the AI population looks perfectly normal.I have a mix of PAI, Aardvark, ARNZ, CDAI and Martinez AI aircraft, so that doesn't narrow it down much.I have PAI and Martinez Fokker 70/100s and PAI and CDAI ERJ's and CRJ's in use. Has anyone ever seen that happen? Anybody have a clue what to look for? Anyone know any AI aircraft that do that?Does any one know if mixing .air files between aircraft can do this? I have copied the .air file from one "AI brand" of aircraft to another - this must have been because I saw one type pull off a particularly unsatisfactory landing when I knew that the same aircraft type from another "brand" landed perfectly well.

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Hey All,Sorry I really can't help you here except to say that you quite accurately described many of my landings! :D Seems to happen more often on water than tarmac tho!Merry Christmas and Take Care! -Ed-

I have seen this problem before and believe that it associated with the aircraft that you are using, rather than any particular AI type: Earlier this year I was trying the KC-135 model from Abacus Publishers (a friend had loaned the Military Warbirds pack to me to see what I thought of it....!). As I taxi'd around the airfield, AI planes were flipping up and around like crazy, and even landed with their noses pointing straight up!! It seems to be a visual oddity in that it didn't seem to affect the AI behaviour, and stopped the moment I swapped to a different aircraft! That Abacus KC-135 is the only one that has caused this issue, and persisted when I loaded it with different panels, so I'm thinking it was something 'odd' with the aircraft model.

Hmmm well that is unlikely to be my problem as the incident last night at Schipol was with the new Project Fokker F100, which was only published yesterday.That is a one-off incident, I load a flight, or otherwise refresh AI traffic, and immediately some, but only a small proportion of, AI aircraft disappear into the tarmac nose first. Thereafter, everything is fine.Weird.

Yes can sympathise with that. I took it as a great step forward when more often than not I could manage to crash ON the airfield rather than off it. So much more convenient.However, one thing I have always been really good at is parking, as long as I don't move I'm OK.Seriously, I have learned that well-made models with good FDE's are a lot easier to land than the rest.I'm a bit disappointed with the Fokker V2 panel, but the exterior appearance is excellent and the FDE too - managed a half decent landing in it first time out, so if you like short haul freeware airliners, this is worth looking at.

>>>but I'm guessing it's an aircraft causing the problem, not an >>>airport.My guess would be the pilot; as I know from the majority of my own landings it is very hard,if not impossible, to hit the tarmac wheel-side down and as some of those A.I. pilots yank the plane about on the taxiways something cruuel,it doesn't surprise me to learn that they can't land for toffee either. I suppose when you have the sliders all maxxed out for A.I. traffic they're having to get a lot of agency people in and who really knows if they've kept their paperwork up to date

Now this is amusing, but I do have an irritating problem here, honest!These planes are parked (although not for long before they set off on their own Journey To The Centre Of The Earth), not landing.At risk of this thread degenerating even further, has anyone else noticed a deterioration in the standard of AI taxying lately? I've twice been hit by AI aircraft on the ground in recent weeks, which is a thing that never happened before.

Humble apologies! You describe a surreal situation and my feeblewitted sense of humour(?) took over. There was talk on another post of scenery layers not matching up and that causing strange things to happen.:+

No, no, I appreciate it.Sort of lateral thinking, turning the AI percentage up means the the Ai airlines have to go out and hire AI pilots, I like it.Trouble is, all the pilots you see through FS9 cockpits have that wierd flattened look, and wear their sunglasses at night. Wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alley would you?In fact, thinking about it, they are all dead-ringers for Otto, the inflatable autopilot in Airplane who has to be "reinflated" by stewardess Julie! Perhaps that explains why they can't taxi straight.

Have a look at the pilots in the fokker 100; they're not A.I. but I'm not sure they're human either: they have sunglasses and headscarves. The pilot has a big stuck-on mustash and the pnf looks like Elton John. It's no wonder I'm always crashing with crews like these.

My guess would be you've got at least one aircraft with screwed up contact points in the aircraft.cfg.For some reason FS9 is a lot more sensitive to contact points than FS2002 was. Planes that works just fine in FS2002, may have problems as small as wheels that are slightly sunk or floating, that pop into the right position when the AI becomes active, to really overt problems like insane bouncing on start up that may in end with the plane frozen in mid bounce.Some AI planes come with pretty good FDE's, and some look like they weren't even tested before release. (I would hazard a guess that the aia and pai planes are NOT the problem aircraft though)You'll have to keep experimanting to find out what aircraft you have that are doing this, once you find it, test it at a few different airports to make sure it's not an airport specific problem.Once you're sure you've found the aircraft, you can start messing with the contact points yourself to try and fix it or, my suggestion would be to contact the developer and get them to fix it.David R

I may not have made it very clear in my earlier post...I don't believe that the AI planes going nose-up, or down is a problem with design and build of the AI planes...I believe it is related to the aircraft that you are attempting to taxi and then fly. That Abacus KC-135 is the only aircraft that I have that causes this problem to appear, so something in the model is causing a wierd distortion to either the behaviour of AI (unlikely though), or else it's corrupting the view point of the person trying to fly it....regardless of the panel being used, be it the original default, or one that I've been putting together myself. I have a different KC which works just fine so I don't bother with that Abacus effort.

I'd be a bit worried boarding a plane with a mustachio'd crew wearing bandanas and dark glasses.They's be better off wearing a leather jackets in a Village People video

I'm not going to comment on which planes I might have seen doing duff landings!I do appreciate the efforts ALL these guys make to put freeware stuff out and on their worst day possible, they still know a 1,000% more than I do!But I think that's it, I've definitely copied .air files across in an attempt to stop certain aircraft behaving like drunken porpoises (not that I've seen one of those)or impacting the tarmac at 2,500 fpm.At this stage I'm not sure which bits (if any) of the .cfg file I copied across with the .air file, so potentially I have a mismatch bewteen .air and .cfg.As a result the planes now go burrowing.Do the contact points refer across into the .mdl area, or can I merely make sure that I match .air with the whole of the relevant .cfg file including the contact points?