Your funniest mistake as a virtual pilot in MSFS?

[OuterMarker 105]

I once wanted to do a flight from Germany to Greece in the 737 but couldn't decide between Corfu LGKR and Kos LGKO (roughly 400 miles apart from each other). I eventually picked Kos, created a flightplan and departed Hamburg for a three hour flight. After reaching my cruising altitude I went to the kitchen and grabbed something to drink...When I came back minutes later I was convinced I was flying to Corfu😄Kept checking the weather for Corfu throughout the flight and only realised what had happened two hours later once I tried to enter the RNAV 34 but the FMC only showed RWY 32/14...

[Swe_Richard 1,116]

What instantly comes to mind for me is my habit of when flying 'by hand' always coming in too high. I am scanning the scenery for the airport believing it to be way further out than it actually is. Then having to do a slam-dunk when I see it some 8-10NM away while being 'kind of' too high. 

 

 

[Swe_Richard 1,116]

I usually chuckle 'well, here comes the vomit comet' to myself before I pitch down. 🤪

[Luis Hernandez 460]

Once flying NZAA to SAEZ in FS9. I was approaching SAEZ in the Wilco A340. I don't remember what brain fart did I have back then. I only remember that my engines were shut down because of that. Luckily, I could restart the engines and continued the approach visually.

Last year I repeated this very same mistake with the Headwinds A339, flying KMIA to KIAH. At TOC, I mixed somehow up the "increase sim-rate" and "shut down engines" hotkeys and this time I wasn't able to restart them. I ended up ditching in the Gulf of Mexico (no, the DITCH button was INOP).

And this one is a classic: I was delighted I had a stable approach with the iniBuilds P-40 at SKRG (something I never managed in a MSFS warbird). I had forgotten to lower the landing gear, and well, you all can guess when did I learn about that and what happened next. I'll only say it was too late for a go-around 😂

[icewater5 181]

5 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

Love that topic!

Another time on the 737 I accidentally turned the IRS switches into align mode while I was taxiing and was completely shocked after takeoff when AP didn't engage and I looked down on the ND... to make matters worse, it was on Vatsim. Not proud to say it, but I just quit the sim; couldn't bear the shame calling in on tower "Sorry, I have to come back in, I turned off my IRS".

What happened a couple of times is that I forgot to raise the gear after a go-around. Go-arounds on Vatsim is when you *really* feel the lack of a second pilot!

Thats what i love about Vatsim. I would take a few procedural tests before going public. Not as a controller, thats there anyway i think, but as a airliner pilot.

I saw one Vatsim video on discord that was a co-ordinated scheduled event in Croatia i recall. A pilot had somehow stalled in the middle of the only available exit ramp, because had not received taxi to departure runway clearence,at pushback. Something like that anyway. It caused go-arounds for a couple of incoming flights. A ground controller told the virtual pilot to submit a serious incident report, and then laughed and said 'no im just jokin mate' !. It was sort of hilarious to watch all this but that was some seriously good virtual realism as well..  .   

[Swe_Richard 1,116]

18 minutes ago, icewater5 said:

I saw one Vatsim video on discord that was a co-ordinated scheduled event in Croatia i recall. A pilot had somehow stalled in the middle of the only available exit ramp, because had not received taxi to departure runway clearence,at pushback. Something like that anyway. It caused go-arounds for a couple of incoming flights. A ground controller told the virtual pilot to submit a serious incident report, and then laughed and said 'no im just jokin mate' !. It was sort of hilarious to watch all this but that was some seriously good virtual realism as well..  .   

I probably have some 10k flight sim hours over the years and I am very much apprehensive about venturing to Vatsim still... 😅

[Ixoye 1,616]

Flying drunk, I ended up crashing in the North Sea between Denmark and Norway 🥴

[RandallR 416]

3 hours ago, Swe_Richard said:

What instantly comes to mind for me is my habit of when flying 'by hand' always coming in too high. I am scanning the scenery for the airport believing it to be way further out than it actually is. Then having to do a slam-dunk when I see it some 8-10NM away while being 'kind of' too high. 

 

 

When I was in RW flight-training I learned that it was too easy to not look out far enough.  In most cases, if you keep your head up you can see the airport a long way off.  In my first cross-countrys I had a tendency to look down too close to the aircraft instead of getting my head up and focusing more on the horizon.

After a long period of silence my instructor asked me once whether I had spotted the airport yet.  I said no.  He said that we flew over it a few minutes earlier and that he had been watching it for the last 20 minutes.  Very embarrassing.

[Jure 27]

Came back to flight simming earlier this year after upgrading my ‘puter. Straight to MSFS 2020 from FS2004. No end of aaahs and ooohs on my part, enjoying every minute of my virtual flying. So there I was in the Beech D18, discovering my small country from above, flying low and slow. It was a warm day and poking around the cockpit, I discovered that a window would open on pilot’s side. Nice, I thought, let’s get some simulated fresh air in, it’s simulated hot in here!

…

your aircraft was overstressed.Restart flight… Return to main menu.

what? how? why? 😄

[Malaromane 395]

I had just recently purchased the excellent HotStart TBM900 and was learning to fly it. It was my first real experience with a detailed, in-depth aircraft model in any flight simulator. I was pretty chuffed when I managed to take off from CYKF and get myself established on a course to CYXU. Suddenly I was taken by surprise by the low fuel warning being displayed on the PFD. I couldn't understand why as I knew I had filled the tanks as part of my preflight. 

As I glanced out the window, I was shocked to discover that my fuel caps were still open and fuel was streaming out of the aircraft at an alarming rate. I managed to get turned around and _just_ barely made it back to CYKF before running out of fuel.

That was my first significant lesson in the difference between a "regular" aircraft model and a "high fidelity" one.

[David Mills 4,150]

I have crashed on approach several times by miscalculating how long I'd be in the toilet.

[qqwertz 732]

Probably with FSEconomy at a small airstrip in the Anchorage area, where you can find dozens of private airstrips, bot on land and water. It was pretty misty and I ended up 100-200 meters behind the actual strip. When I wanted to fly the next leg, FSEconomy had determined that I was closer to a nearby water aerodrome and forced me to start there. Somehow I was able to swim my tail dragger from the water aerodrome to the small strip near the shore, where I could continue my trip.

[z06z33 723]

12 hours ago, Virtual-Chris said:

Yeah it sounds like it was very poor crew behavior on that flight. That's alarming that pilots could be flying without a valid license!  But just because it's inexcusable and perhaps only one incident has occurred, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be automated. There are lots of functions that are automated that don't need to be. So I still think there's merit in auto gear deployment's unless there's a safety reason for NOT automating gear down on final approach that I'm not thinking of.  It wouldn't hurt to have gear automatically up on departure either.

As an airline pilot it just isn't somthing that's needed, we gotta do somthing up there besides drink coffee and complain haha. In reality I would think an automatic gear would lead to more gear up landings or flying with the gear down for half the flight... Over reliance on automation leads to complacency and if the gear has dropped automatically for the last 300 legs you'll get it in your head that it'll drop this leg to but it didn't, then you got busy and the checklists get forgotten etc suddenly it's a gear up landing... Humans are horrible monitors of automation and need tasks to keep on track. We also have aural alarms that warn us if the gear isn't down.. How they missed the gear being up is beyond me

Edited August 2 by z06z33

[Mace 1,753]

11 hours ago, Fiorentoni said:

Love that topic! I once landed on a runway under construction on UUDD (the scenery had modelled it correctly as under construction, but there were charts available for it, so I didn't notice). I started to wonder why there were no runway lights at night, but I didn't have time for a go-around so I landed there anyway...

That actually happened in real life back in the 70's or 80's -- I think it was at Mexico City (MMMX).     It was really bad because the plane hit some dump trucks and backhoes. 

[Fiorentoni 3,318]

57 minutes ago, Mace said:

That actually happened in real life back in the 70's or 80's -- I think it was at Mexico City (MMMX).     It was really bad because the plane hit some dump trucks and backhoes. 

Indeed, I remember that incident from a tv series. It was a late swingover instructed by tower IIRC and all went downhill from there.
There was also another incident with a 747 taking off from a runway under construction: https://www.flightglobal.com/sia-747-crashed-attempting-take-off-from-closed-runway-/34880.article

That‘s why I turn off collision detection in MSFS…