1 hour ago, Ron Attwood said:

I'm retired. I don' need no steekin' career mode. 😀

🤣

I'm one of those past 65 who are up for work and continue earning a lot of money with ferry flights, until my medical certificate can no longer be revalidated 🙂

Edited January 24, 20251 yr by jcomm

I've unlocked all the fixed wing certifications except for the ATP stuff as I've been enjoying the missions I have available in the smaller aircraft. Finally bought a Vision Jet this past week and I've been having a blast flying VIP charters. Bugs can get more annoying as you have more missions available, but most can be mitigated. A few tips from someone who primarily flies in career mode to help you avoid annoyances (you may have seen some of this info if you keep an eye on the official forums):

• Zoom in on the world map to check out your departure and destination airports before accepting a mission. The detail is high enough that you can see buildings or trees that may lead to issues when your aircraft spawns in at parking. The mission generator will also happily ask you to land at a strip too small for the plane you are flying.
• Make any flight plan changes on the EFB before you begin your flight (pay attention to the altitude, as it will sometime default to too low or too high of an altitude). Remember to send those changes to ATC and your aircraft using the buttons in the tablet. As @Lotharen mentioned, if you make changes during your flight they tend the break the mission flow.
• Buying fuel is bugged and will not refuel your aircraft. Create a keybind to add fuel to get around this (I use Ctrl+Shift+F). Avoid the option to both add fuel and repair your aircraft, as folks on the official forums mentioned this can cause issues.
• Be mindful of the certifications you unlock. Once you unlock IFR, I believe all transport and cargo missions will default to real weather and there doesn't seem to be a way around this (maybe fixed in SU1?) Once you unlock your tailwheel endorsement, you will get a bunch of transport and cargo missions with the Beaver... if you're a fan of the Beaver, that's great! But it has its own set of bugs to deal with and I tend to avoid it (plus it's not exactly a fast aircraft once you have the turboprops unlocked).
• The tailwheel endorsement will open up banner towing, crop dusting and SAR missions, which are a lot of fun to fly. But... banner and crop dusting missions in particular have bogus time penalties, so if you stick to these types of missions your reputation will take a hit (which matters less as you unlock more specializations). SAR missions will sometimes ask you to land in inaccessible places, and I usually get a mission failure when I land but then get a mission success in the results screen.
• Speaking of reputation, it will scale with mission difficulty. So, as you progress in career mode, the ferry and flight seeing missions have less impact (both positive or negative) than the missions that require higher certs on the "skill tree". Firefighting missions in the AT-802 are an easy way to a nice chunk of good reputation, as it's usually a guarantee to get 100% as long as you put out the fire on your first attempt.
• Skydiving missions are a lot of fun, but don't bother with them until you get your turboprop rating. Getting a 172 up to 10k ft is NOT fun. Also, as in real life, you'll want to return to the ground as quickly as possible. You can be a cowboy and put the prop into beta, but you can also idle and nose down and keep the speed in the green (or up to NE if it's a smooth day) and still get 100% on timing.
• VIP charter and medical transport missions have phases of flight that affect mission scoring where you need to speak with the passengers. Due to a bug (that I believe will be fixed in SU1), if you reach your cruising altitude but the mission objectives still tell you to climb to your assigned altitude, keep climbing until the objective disappears. You'll then progress to the next "stage" of the mission where you speak with the passengers. After that is complete, you can return to your assigned cruising altitude.
• You mentioned buying a 737... please don't! There are currently a lot of bugs that can destroy your aircraft, so only buy something that is easy to replace until Asobo irons out the bugs. I made my credits back on the Vision Jet after flying 3-4 missions, so I can buy another one if it spawns in a building and gets wrecked. Some other gotchas: mesh glitches at airports, using the option to skip ahead in the mission and getting spawned in the ground, or having employees wreck aircraft if you have them enabled. Speaking of which, insurance is broken and will not reimburse you (but given the current state of the insurance industry, maybe that's intentional!) At this point, it's not worth it to get anything above the lowest insurance option. Due to these glitches, I've been sticking with "employee" missions for the expensive aircraft so I don't lose a purchased aircraft due to an annoying bug.
• I am pleasantly surprised when ATC works without issue, and I've been pleasantly surprised more often lately. That said, if you reach your TOD and they haven't asked you to descend, make the request manually in the ATC interface. Sometimes this will break the flow, and shortly after they will ask you to return to your previous cruising altitude, but your readback will be the correct lower altitude. Using this trick, I've been able to avoid cancelling IFR prematurely, but canceling is also an option.
• Lastly, the most important advice of all: Abort. Yes, you may lose an hour of flying time, but if you think of it as free flight in 2020, you haven't lost any time at all. Aborting is a lot better than trying to land in a 50kt 90-degree crosswind at your destination and crashing your own aircraft! Also, just like you can ultimately decline requests from ATC in real life, feel free to ignore mission objectives that have you landing in a 20kt tailwind. Yes, you'll miss out on some "points" when you complete the mission, but at least you'll get a nice landing out of the mission!

I've been using the FS SimRate Bandit on flightsim.to to make the longer missions less monotonous. It's a bit buggy and will often crash (or maybe this is due to bugs in 2024's API), but getting an audible indication when you change the simrate makes it worth the hassle (Alt R, then the + or - keys by default). Just be mindful near clouds due to turbulence or updrafts, and go back to 1x before each waypoint to keep the autopilot in check, or when speaking with ATC or passengers.

Hope this post makes missions more enjoyable as you go through the ranks!

Big Thanks @Funky D👍👍👍