MSFS was working fine last week, but now 90% of my flights that I create from the world map screen will not load past 50% on the blue progress bar before it stalls out.  

Are there any tips or tricks to get past this?  Yes i emptied the community folder and turned off the anti virus.

I had the same yesterday but only with one flight. MSFS was still working, the teaser text on the bottom still updated regularly, but after almost 20 minutes hanging at 50% i called it a day and ended the flight and the entire MSFS shabang through Task Manager.
Today it ran without a problem... for now.

Edited December 21, 20223 yr by Lange_666

A few cases of sim lockups when trying to load a flight.

1. Try changing the aircraft (or the livery) before clicking fly. For some reason, and not fully consistent, but if the aircraft is not changed from whatever is in the window (or was last used), the sim seems to experience some type of "null" value and the sim freezes or hangs while trying to load a flight.  Change the aircraft (or livery) before clicking Fly, and it doesn't hang up while loading a flight. Like go figure?   Again this is not consistent all the time but seems to be that way for most of the time in my sim. (MSFS- Premium-deluxe-store version).  

Give it a go and report back to see if this is the case in your sim. 

2. If still locking up, Scenery indexes might be messed up - doesn't hurt to give a clean to restore order.. go to C:\Users\yourname_\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalCache and delete the SceneryIndexes folder. (It will rebuild upon next sim startup)..