For me it is relaxing to have consequences.

Sometimes I do want to fly with no failures, like if I'm learning a plane or I want to focus on an approach or some other aspect of flying. But most of the time, I don't want to fly and reaching my destination is absolutely always 100% assured. Too many decades of sim flying with zero consequences I guess. I'm loving the added realism.

I really don’t want failures and if I want a relaxing hour in the pattern I”ll fly a Carenado.

However if an aircraft has failures available I’ll tend to leave them on as it adds an extra layer of realism for me and I’ll do what I’m supposed to do and keep an aye on the Ts & Ps etc.

When failures firstbecame a thing in flight sim they were ridiculous and things were dropping off the aircraft every few minutes.

I don’t want to see failures but just knowing they’re possible means I treat the aircraft a to more realistically.

Sim routines in the. “ real “ world ( with some airlines) are also getting beyond a joke with the amount of failures.

For example last year I had : approaching the airport just above minimum reserve fuel, overcast cloud at 500ft, ILS scheduled to be taken off the air for maintenance, a woman then collapsed in the rear galley, condition assessed as critical, I then lost both GPS. Then lost a main AC bus, Mayday called and got ILS maintenance cancelled , ATC deliberately kept high requiring GS intercept from above, followed by a 2nd AC bus failure. ( loosing 2 buses on a 4 bus all electric aeroplane like the 787 is a major issue.) All within a 30 minute window.

Complete and utter negative training, if anything even resembling that had happened for real you’d be off work for years with PTSD

Edited July 31Jul 31 by jon b

On 7/29/2026 at 2:15 PM, Kristofski said:

From that reddit post, apparently Justflight removed failures after the metrics showed only 10% of users had them turned on. They decided to focus on other features, which makes sense.

JustFlight implemented a failure system for their 146 line. It saw very little reception and thus so decided not to continue implementing this system for their other airliners.

They may be looking at it for the F100/F70 line as there's been some demand for it.

Though to clarify JustFlight has never retroactively removed failures from an aircraft after it's been implemented.

As to answer the question, the only failure system I use is the one on the Leonnardo Maddog, as it all occurs relatively naturally. Aircraft with trigger based failures or fixed time based failures don't appeal to me.

20 hours ago, JYW said:

Have you tried taxying with the chocks still in place? Or a pitot cover left in place? Most walkaround items do have an impact on the flight - even in default planes 🙂

Yes, which is why I perfunctorily click the chocks, the pitot covers and the static port if equipped and much prefer the addons that give me the option to make them disappear forever. That's a tiny part of a real preflight.

No matter how many times I check the tires, they will always be brand new. Controls will always be rigged properly. The fuel will always be perfect. There will never be a nick in the prop.

All those things have click points, and because the underlying condition is static, clicking on them is pointless.

I personally prefer service based failures or live aircraft status, I do not simply activate failures myself unless I decide to do a training flight which is completely different scenario based (for example practising V1 engine failure cuts and so fort).

For normal flying - if addon aircraft has realism settings where things break if you exceed or do not operate the airplane as prescribed in the airplane flight manual then I will leave that on. The only setting turned off is default collision and crash settings - I personally do not like that. Otherwise I leave most of the realistic settings on - I'd expect the engine oil levels to decrease over time, Brakes wearing off. Etc. Things that pilots would consider in real life, Many addons nowadays simulate this quite nicely which is what I like about them. For GA aircraft I prefer A2A's concept where aircraft ages over time and as a pilot how one would have to take that in account before every flight.

Almost all of Pre-flight checklists have maintenance and aircraft status as first item - I like running that check as per as real life. Previously when I had time, I even created excel spreadsheet with different aircraft noting down numbers hours flown as well as any events or concerns raised on the flight. Always used to go back to that spreadsheet before next flight - in fact it was my virtual aircraft logbook.

Edited July 31Jul 31 by CAP1234

A good video on the topic - failures can occur IRL from things you could not possibly have checked (in this case the bolt that was missing is behind a housing that would need a flashlight+mirror to check during the pre-flight walkaround)

In the Sim, I've had this specific issue - loss of tail rotor control - due to my hardware pedals failing mid flight. Because its a sim, we have the luxury of pausing the flight to diagnose the problem, but without pausing to unplug and replug my pedals to reset them, could I make a landing without pedals? I did some trials on the weekend and its not easy regardless of what helo I was using, so being able to practice the maneuver in a sim where there's less consequences for getting it wrong is invaluable as a training and learning tool.

Random failures are important to me because without them a lot of other things become meaningless. No need to look at engine gauges if they never show anything but green. No need to do a run-up if your magnetos are always perfect. I don't need to know where the alternate-static-air knob is if there's never a need to pull it. No need to follow a preflight checklist if there won't ever be anything wrong to find. etc.