P3D V4 Cargo Aircraft Recommendations

[JoeFackel 760]

5 minutes ago, tooting said:

... AND buy the pmdg 

I corrected it for you 😎

[Bob Marton 39]

Since you had mentioned that range was something you were interested in, I had thought the 747 would achieve that as well. But that DC8 idea is worth looking into.

[qqwertz 772]

1 hour ago, djbully said:

The Aerosoft DC-8 has a massive MTOW, as does the Just Flight Tri-Star Professional.

The DC-8 is not yet available as a cargo plane. 

Peter

[Chock 17,769]

Depends what you're into, props or jets and what you mean by 'decent range and cargo capacity'. What you really have to look at in Air Hauler (apart from first and foremost what you like to do which is more important than everything else), beyond simply the range and the size of the hold, is the total costs of the thing, i.e. how much to acquire it, service it, fuel and insure it, plus the range and capacity of the thing weighed against its fuel consumption and (to a lesser extent) cruise speed since fast travel times can contribute to flexibility. Look at these things in such a critical way and you'll soon find a few winners.

For example the PMDG DC-6A can be bought outright in AH for 12.5 million, or leased for 1.5 million per month, yet it can carry nearly 35,000 cargo and has a range of 5,000 cruising at 260. The numbers make it a very strong contender for a cargo hauler; it's a 2.7 ratio for acquisition cost against capacity, whereas you're looking at a ratio of just 0.5 for the 747-400.

So let's compare a more modern propliner with that DC-6 and see what we get. The MJC Dash 8 Q400 can lift 16,716 cargo, has a pretty short range of just 780, costs 14.5 million to buy or 1.8 million to lease. These numbers make it look like a much worse choice than the DC-6A for cargo, and indeed it is, however, as bad as it is in comparison, if you factor in that the Dash 8 has quite a bit of STOL capability and certainly a lot more than a DC6, and it and can cruise at over 315, making it nearer to jets than props in terms of speed, and it has much better avionics, so it could land in weather mimimums that would have a DC-6 either stuck on the ground before it even dared to set off, or diverting elsewhere if it was arriving in the soup. All that means it can certainly do things the DC6 can't do, so another deciding factor for your choice of aeroplane might be weather, or you can ignore the economics and fly the plane you want to fly, after all, you might simply like the fact that the Dash 8 has a HUD and an FMC and the DC6 does not.

Some unusual, or at least less common choices are worth considering, often a good clue is to see what real world commercial aeroplanes managed to carve out extended careers in other roles, i.e. as military tankers, cargo planes etc.

Some people have already mentioned the DC8, and you've got both the Just Flight and Aerosoft ones available for P3D (the Aerosoft one is better, but the JF one includes some extended genuine cargo versions with CFM 56 engines and FMCs, so it's actually worth buying both of those if you use Air Hauler and particularly want to operate cargo DC-8s, even though the Aerosoft one is better overall), but keep in mind that even the long fuselage DC-8 73 has just 43,171 cargo capacity, which whilst not small, is not massive for a four-engined airliner.

One which certainly makes an interesting choice and has very good cargo capacity, is the Vickers VC-10, with 50,690 cargo capacity, 5,850 range, cruise speed of 528, but only costs 61.3 million to buy. That thing will have you making very good profits quickly.

Ultimately, flying what you want to fly is the main thing, but with a bit of an eye on the stats and performance over certain routes, you could make a lot more profit than your 747 and 777 friends are doing, even with a much smaller aeroplane. Don't confuse big turnover figures with big profit figures!

Edited August 28, 2018 by Chock

[djbully 210]

5 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

The DC-8 is not yet available as a cargo plane. 

Peter

As far air hauler goes, it does not matter. You would just modify the plane to be cargo rather than pax, and away you go. 

It just means that when you are flying the plane in sim it will look like a pax plane, but you are carrying cargo! 

[Chock 17,769]

6 minutes ago, qqwertzde said:

The DC-8 is not yet available as a cargo plane. 

Peter

Anything can be a cargo plane in Air Hauler. That's one of the fun things about it, you could use an SR-71 Blackbird as a cargo plane in it if you wanted to lol.

[thibodba57 462]

Since we are going to bring up prop aircraft.  There is a Freeware C-130/L-100 in P3Dv4 already.  If you have the old model from FSXSE Im pretty sure you can fix the texture issue.  There's also the CLS DC-10.  I don't truely understand why you guys can't have the same airframe though.

[fluffyflops 1,848]

Get that pmdg 747 ERF 

[Quackarov55 0]

I really like all the answers.  Typing out what I have been thinking made me realize how stupid it is.

[Tomaz Drnovsek 440]

Old topic, I know...

I'm also looking for a cargo aircraft for AH2 but not an airliner type (like 737, 777, 747, ...). I'm looking for something smaller, preferably payware, dedicated to cargo - at least via liveries. I already have Carenado C208B Super Cargomaster, Aerosoft Twin Otter and JustFlight Electra Model 10. Does anything else come to mind?

[severniae 78]

On 8/29/2018 at 1:59 AM, Andrew Urbanczyk said:

I really like all the answers.  Typing out what I have been thinking made me realize how stupid it is.

Yes, just tell your friends that you will be joining their fun in the 747/777 - if they don't like it, join a new VA or find new friends!

Life is too short.

[Chock 17,769]

Depends what you like really. Obviously you need to weigh up a few factors beyond capacity, such as cost to acquire or lease, cost to run, range, speed, runway requirements, etc, and some of these will affect how suitable they are from an economics standpoint, but with AH2, I think a more important factor is how much you'll enjoy flying them on numerous routes. Sometimes this means it's the ones with some quirks or less than brilliant performance in some area which end up being the ones which will endear them to you for regular flights. To explain:

For example, I really like using the Aeroplane Heaven Fairchild C-119 Flying Boxcar in AH2, and this is for a few reasons beyond merely its suitability as a cargo aeroplane. First up, I like the looks of it, second, it has a reasonably good capacity at 30,639 lbs. Range, at about 1,700 miles is acceptable for flights around Europe where I use it, and its cruise speed of about 200 knots, whilst slow, is not terrible so long as I keep trips down to just a few hundred miles or so. I like the cockpit night lighting very much indeed, so it's fun to fly at night. But most of all, I like the fact that it can be a challenge to get it up to anywhere even near to its service ceiling of 23,000 feet when it is fully loaded; managing the climb whilst en-route gives me something interesting to do en route, particularly when flying between Fance to Spain, which requires traversing the Pyrenees, which go up to an altitude of just over 11,000 feet in places. That's a lot lower than the advertised maximum ceiling of the C-119, but in practice when I have that thing heavily loaded with cargo and fuel, it can be a challenge to get it to climb fast enough to a safe clearance of well over 12,000 feet when I'm heading for those mountains, especially at night and in poor weather, when you might not even be able to see those big lumps of granite in front of you.

So, what I tend to do with aeroplanes in AH2, is lease them initially, and use them for a few trips to find out if I'm going to like flying them repeatedly on cargo trips, and it was in doing this between my bases in Le Bourget and Almeria which demonstrated this fun stuff to do with such flights in the C-119. In the same vein as the C-119 is the PMDG Douglas DC-6, since it too requires a lot of management to look after it on flights, and likewise, the Aerosoft Consolodated PBY Catalina is another one where such challenges arise; this one allowing you to have seaplane bases too of course.

These factors are what I consider for aeroplanes I will enjoy flying a lot in AH2. I let the AI pilots fly the big nintendo jets in my fleet for me, since there is little to do en route with those things. This is one of the many reasons why I am looking forward to JF's forthcoming Boeing 747-200F, since it will require using a Delco Carousel for navigation rather than an FMC.

Really having to fly the thing is a big deciding factor for me in AH2 with the aeroplanes which I personally use, whereas ones where I hand the keys over to my AI employees are simply a case of the best aeroplane for the job. This is why I have MD-11, 787 and 747-8s for those long AI-piloted cargo jobs. I have 787s, CJ4s and Dash Eights for various AI-piloted scheduled passenger routes. It's all for exactly the same reasons that real airlines use those types a lot that I picked them too; they bring in the cash.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Chock

[FPStewy 538]

38 minutes ago, 0Artur0 said:

Old topic, I know...

I'm also looking for a cargo aircraft for AH2 but not an airliner type (like 737, 777, 747, ...). I'm looking for something smaller, preferably payware, dedicated to cargo - at least via liveries. I already have Carenado C208B Super Cargomaster, Aerosoft Twin Otter and JustFlight Electra Model 10. Does anything else come to mind?

Depends how big or small you want to go, The Electra looks nice but also look at the DC-3 but your getting bigger for sure, the virtualcol ATR but I'm not sure if it's fully P3D v4 compatible, check out the Fokker F27.

I want to go bigger and I'm looking at two at the moment. The Transall C-160 "Tactically the C-160 has a superior short airfield performance which includes its ability to perform steep descents of up to 20 degrees, take off from 700m long airstrips and perform landings on 400-metre-long airstrips. It can carry up to 8.5 tonnes for 5,000 kms." or the Virtavia C-17 which really looks nice. The C-160 is a prop but the C-17 is jet.

400 meter strips, you can do bush flying with 8.5 tonnes with this thing.

[Adrian123 1,015]

As far as a diverse aircraft for a large to medium size freighter, kinda hard to beat the good ole 757F, IMO. get you in and out of smaller airfields and nice payload.

Edited January 23, 2019 by Adrian123

[qqwertz 772]

2 hours ago, 0Artur0 said:

Old topic, I know...

I'm also looking for a cargo aircraft for AH2 but not an airliner type (like 737, 777, 747, ...). I'm looking for something smaller, preferably payware, dedicated to cargo - at least via liveries. I already have Carenado C208B Super Cargomaster, Aerosoft Twin Otter and JustFlight Electra Model 10. Does anything else come to mind?

You could have a look at Milviz DHC-3 Otter

Peter