Now to the meat of it, the ageing A340, not many left, certainly not the pride of many fleets but solid workhorses. The latest A340, the 600, reached airlines (Virgin Atlantic being the first) in the early naughties (2002) as an enlarged A340-300. About 10 years behind the 300 and 200 series, it offered about 50 more seats (dependant on airline fit of course) but over 100t increase in MTOW.

It provided airlines with similar passenger capacity to the 747 Classics but with about 25% more cargo volume. There were 2 versions of the 600, 642 and 643, the latter of the two being the HGW (High Gross Weight) version.

Initial reactions to the aircraft weren't as great as hoped, fuel economy was not quite as advertised and airlines started asking questions. Airbus investigated and found the First/Business class cabins were heavier than they had anticipated which was bringing the cruise CofG forward, thus requiring a larger downward force from the elevator to keep it level and hence the aircraft acting heavier than it actually was. Fuel economy suffered.

In 2007 Airbus started recommending a 5t reduction in the forward holds to compensate for this but the airlines weren't happy and the aircraft aquired an inefficient reputation which wasn't entirely true.

Nevertheless, the A346 was the 2nd best selling A340 (after the A343) with 97 aircraft delivered (against 218 for the 300).

Here we have one of Qatar's 4 A340-642's, A7-AGD parked up in Bangkok for the flight back to Doha.

Taxiing out and looking back at the terminal.

Similar view after take off and looking out over Bangkok.

Many hours of darkness later (well, not that many) the sun starts rising behind us, we can't quite outrun it.

Finally the same wingview coming into Doha, not many photos for this flight as it was dark for most of it.

Sticking with the A340-600 theme, we'll be QTR654, the daylight flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Parked at the gate with the city behind us on a fine summer morning (probably nut sweatingly hot)

Lining up behind a company A380 with a company B777 behind us.

Shortly after take off...

Despite being a day flight, after flying over the desert we then spent hours over the sea and there really wasn't much to see. Therefore, the last photo of this leg is us landing at Bandaranaike Int'l Airport.

What we're actually looking at is the military apron, I've been in the process of converting all my Military AI over from my FS9 installation. It's not all complete, there're still plenty of models not converted (I know they'll work in FSX but my P3Dv4 and FSX(SE) setups all share AI so they need to be FSX models).

The return flight is, unsurprisingly, QTR655 and is a night flight back to Doha.

Shortly after take off...

If there wasn't much to see on the way out, on the way home at night there was even less, so here we are parked up out in the boon docks of Doha airport.

The last of the Qatar A346 flights is from Doha to Barcelona, QTR145. It's now an A359 flight but in the Summer season Qatar used an A340-600.

At 9am there's still some morning fog to burn off, there's a definite haze in the air as we load up at the gate.

A view from the main gear as we're being pushed back. The Wilco model is far from perfect in every regard but they've managed to make it look good enough to suspend your belief just long enough to enjoy it (providing you're not being too fussy). Here's a basic view of the main gear, somehow detailed with hydraulic lines and brakes but equally messy and disjointed (that back inside wheel is about to roll away for sure!) with dubious texturing in places.

Of course, in real life, if you had this view you would be about to be squished.

Taking off into the murk...

We took off on the westerly of the two runways on the grounds we were going west(ish). FS AI traffic possesses less forethought so here we see an aircraft taking off on the easterly runway and then turning across me (in IMC).

I decided to intervene (as ATC) and limit my climb to the initial SID altitude to ensure we stayed apart.

I kept a beady eye on him and in the end we didn't come into conflict, TCAS remained silent.

Our route took us firstly into Iran and along the mountain range along the western border with Iraq. Since I made this flight, they've started flying through Iraq again, probably about 100nm west of my track and up the eastern side of the country, over such infamous places as Basra, Baghdad and Mosul.

As we make our way up and out of the desert we spy a few other aircraft, firstly a FlyDubai 737 going to Uytash, in Russia on the Caspian Sea.

A trusty ol' BA Triple making it's way back to London.

And finally a Mahan Air A310 parked up... somewhere...

I'm all out of photos now so next time, some flying over Europe and into Barcelona, then figuring out where to go next to fly more A346 flights.

Spoiler: we end up hitting South America, Oceania, Asia and Africa in 78's and a cheeky 319 before trying out an A343 and then flying with the largest named operator of A340's on the planet...

 

Super looking set of shots showcasing the A340!