I've been a long-time FSX user and have only just recently (in the last few weeks) switched to P3D v4.4 and am loving it. I do a lot of flying - I have over 10,000 hours logged with my current VA, and have now decided to take on a challenge of flying to every airport that exists within the sim. I've tried searching the internet to find if anyone else has ever done this but haven't had any success. Am thinking that this might take me a good 7 years to complete, or more....

I would welcome any tips that someone may have as to how I should approach this task. Only just started a few days ago, in regions that are in daylight during my waking hours so that I can at least see the scenery! Am expecting to greatly enhance my geographical knowledge :-)  

I'm listing all the airports, airport codes and dates I land at each airport in a spreadsheet, as well as any relevant comments I may have about each airport.

Cheers,

Hugh

P.S. I know that not every country has an airport :-)

24,000 airfields. 365 days per year. How many airfilelds per day? Five? Seven? Ten? Ten would be 3,650 per year. So seven years is about right. Good luck!!

A daunting task indeed.  If you don't already have it, a free utility called Little Nav Map (now v2.2.3) is very handy and shows you all the airports loaded in the sim.  Very flexible and enormously capable navigation and flight planning tool.  Have fun, and report back from time to time to let us know the progress you're making.

 

6 hours ago, Shug said:

have now decided to take on a challenge of flying to every airport that exists within the sim.

Well of all the goals of flight simming, this goal tops them all combined! 👍

Flying to all capitals of the world is the most I've done. I've done it like 3 times.😵

Depending on how realistically (real wx & real time of day) you fly, if you intend to accomplish this within a decade, your sleep schedule will need to be affected unless you accelerate time in sim. 🧐

Some of the hops will be extremely short and some will be very long. Many airports are very boring. Either way, its going to take some serious planning too; there will be a lot of zigzag. 🗺️

Do you intend on doing water runways as well? if so you're talking 26,200 airports according to my LNM stats. 🤯

I'm waiting for FSAerodata to release this:  https://www.fsaerodata.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=136    before doing any more world tours myself.🤓

New Zealand is easy, just wait until you get to the USA, Europe, and Pacific Islands! I wish you well.🙂

Let me point you at :

http://ourairports.com/data/

The airports.csv is really all you need...and if you use excel you can filter down by airport size.

This is the most comprehensive list of worldwide airports that I have found so far.

I wish you success Hugh. I'm sure your journey will interesting and exciting.

I once was in the process of flying to and landing at every airport in Florida and got about 50% of the way when I had to build an new PC. Since then life has gotten in the way of my continuing but one day I'll get back to it.

Clear skies and good landings.

 

Using the same plane for each hop?  Seems that for the long ocean distances you'd need a jet, but the jets aren't going to get you into some of the smaller airports....so I suppose you'll be mixing up the aircraft types as you go.

You have a heck of a lofty goal to be sure.  I'm taking a PMDG 737 BBJ around the world, currently sitting in New Zealand's North Island awaiting the pilot to sober up for the next hop.   Been stuck there a month now...

Mark

 

I changed planes several times during my flights.  Used everything from the J-3 to the 737 as Florida has a complete mix of airport types.

I think I would have a talk with the pilot you are stuck with in NZ, Mark. A month under the sauce seems a bit long to me.😁

 

Thanks for all the comments and words of support.

I'm using https://fsxmap.com/  to track where airports are located, but will have a look at Little Nav Map as well. I'm not considering water runways or heliports purely on the grounds that I can't fly helicopters that well! and I'm lacking a seaplane in P3D at present though of course, that may change over the years. I intend to use all the planes in my hangar, though since airports are generally fairly close, a Bonanza or Baron may suffice for many. There will be opportunities to use jets of course.

I fly in real time with real weather. Am counting on flying to ten airports per day. Countries with the largest number of airports such as USA, Canada, Mexico and Brazil, are in daylight whilst I'm asleep or at work so I'll probably have to leave those until I'm retired in about three years and tackle those then when I have more time. I started off in Australia, but now that Orbx have announced a new version of Australian scenery for release next year, I'm going to wait until then to continue with Australian flights.

However, I did see that YCBG and YMHB must be about the closest airports to each other - I did know that OTBD and OTHH are very close and RJCJ and RJCC share taxiways so I wouldn't count those as separate airports, so it will be interesting to see if I encounter any two other airports that are closer than the Tasmanian ones, but I doubt it!

Are you doing this on vatsim? 

No, Pete, not set up on Vatsim.