As the topic says, wich career addon are you using ? Or are you playing the ingame career ?

I don't think there is a "best" career addon, since it is a very personal thing to decide which mix is the best for you. I personally don't like addons that make me start in a small plane because I have many years of simming experience and want to fly my favorite planes right away. I thought I would like a very realistic addon and extensively tested On Air. It is very good, but the realism also limits what you can do; for instance, you can't own a plane and fly on two different continents with it. Instead, I came to enjoy Fly The Line a lot. And then there is the option to join a virtual airline. Mine (Canada Air Virtual) offers a lot of things for free that you also find in career addons, and it has the added benefit of providing a community.

Other aspects to consider are: how much airline management do you want to do? If you just want to fly, Fly The Line and A Pilot's Life 2 are very good choices. If you want to manage personnel and finances of an airline, On Air, Airline2Sim or Air Hauler are good. And then there are tools like Self Loading Cargo that focus on passenger management.

Lots to think about, but the beauty is that you can always change your mind and try another addon that works differently.

Peter

A Pilot's Life v2. Let's you fly any route in any plane/helo as long as you have a license for that type of aircraft. (ie: Boeing 777 family license, Airbus A320 family license.) Needs SFUIPC to interface with MSFS or XPUIPC for Xplane 12.

Neofly is free but you need to start as an acorn and grow into an oak tree. Something you mentioned not wanting... but it's free.

Thanks for good answers !

1 hour ago, Parme said:

Thanks for good answers !

One of the giant differences between flying planes in real life versus pretending in a flight sim is there really are no meaningful consequences in the latter. One way to address that is to 'fly for score', and both A Pilot's Life v2 and Self Loading Cargo offer robust scoring routines that complete at the end of your flight. I used to use APLv2 but tired of a few of its issues so I now using it just for route planning in a section called 'Tools'. For over a year I've use Self Loading Cargo which is a masterpiece of design, offers not only as someone mentioned 'passenger management' but it clearly also revolves around piloting execution quality and has a very robust scoring routine at the end of the flight, giving at last some consequences to your flight. It is also decently integrated with GSX Pro.

@Noel Self Loading Cargo which consequences you will get with an "not so good" flight?

A Pilots life is good for simulating airline careers but it is not without fault.

It will take quite some time until you earn enough money to buy additional licenses. That alone is fine but the license system does not reflect real life common type ratings. So for example you have to buy the A330 and A350 licenses seperately. The same with the B777 and B787 licenses.

In the real world those aircraft share the type rating so it should be just one purchase.

21 hours ago, Alti said:

@Noel Self Loading Cargo which consequences you will get with an "not so good" flight?

The certain knowledge that you are a lame sim pilot 😉. In the real world consequences help you keep your head in the game. In a sim score can become a surrogate for that missing piece. Here's an example of SLC's scoring routine:

Flight Report - Air New Zealand ANZ222, from Queenstown International Airport (NZQN) to Auckland International Airport(NZAA) | Self-Loading Cargo Passenger Flight

29 minutes ago, Noel said:

The certain knowledge that you are a lame sim pilot 😉. In the real world consequences help you keep your head in the game. In a sim score can become a surrogate for that missing piece. Here's an example of SLC's scoring routine:

Flight Report - Air New Zealand ANZ222, from Queenstown International Airport (NZQN) to Auckland International Airport(NZAA) | Self-Loading Cargo Passenger Flight

Have never heard of this App. Looks very interesting

Another Early Access product... no thanks.

37 minutes ago, bmarcoux2 said:

Have never heard of this App. Looks very interesting

The scoring component is only one element. It also adds a lot of ambience re communication w/ ground and crew during pre-flight and flight. This is a challenging app to get right and the developer is clearly very creative and skilled. I'm about to start descent on a flight from ENBR>LSGG and here is a look at the resizable 'windows' covering different features of SLC. I'm just now informing crew and PAX when we will be starting descent. So beyond score it gives you other actions you need to do relating to crew management: