NGXfanatic

Wow, this happened at my hometown airport. It was a very windy and cold day, but I'm not sure if the weather conditions contributed to the incident. Anyhow, looks like your garden variety aborted takeoff, except it overan the end of the runway. Looks like blown tires can complicate matters, and unlike an engine shutdown, things can get real screwy with the loss of control, and even the calculations done during preflight to account for the necessary margin of remaining runway can be thrown out the window (or runway) under such circumstances. I read on another forum about the dire consequences if this happened on a runway on the edge of a body of water, say, KSFO runway 1L/R.

I would love to know if there will ever be a 200ER expansion. I'm dying to fly some British Airways routes in the proper equipment.

No doubt that there is no excuse, in this day and age in our hyper-connected world, to lose a jumbo jet like this. I believe this incident is going to be the wake up call the industry needed, like all past aviation disasters. Of course expense/politics/bureaucracy will be claimed as the reason why such technology was never in place, but once the costs are tallied up following this disaster, both in terms of monetary damages and the loss of life, I see no reason why the industry would not learn from this teachable moment. Was the recent emergence of the "internet of everything" and the business of big data destined to make it's way into the world of aircraft tracking? I'm sure it was, but like the degradation of infrastructure in my home country, the United States, it takes a major loss of lives to prompt businesses to make the expensive investments necessary to avoid future losses. I am positive that there will be major changes to improve aircraft tracking once the dust settles. A foolproof way to transmit blackbox data live to server farms, with redundant systems in place to account for external forces like sabotage or hardware failure, seems to make the most sense. Afterall, blackboxes are supposed to be indestructible, and simply adding additional tracking functionality to existing technology like ACARS or engine monitors would not fully account for the potential for total failure of those two mechanisms, as in this case. Yes it will be costly, but so are accident investigations, lawsuits, and airline bankruptcies. A proper cost benefit analysis will justify the added expense of the most suitable solution.

Yeah, I remember reading about this event first on Reddit, and one of the posts mentioned the captain's intensive interest in flight simming. http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1zur6k/malaysia_airlines_plane_loses_contact_malaysia/cfx9hrq It's always a joy to hear that real life pilots enjoy simming in their offline lives, as too often I fear the overall pilot community and the general public as a whole see simming as a joke or simple game. According to his Youtube account, he apparently owns the PMDG 777, it would be hard to argue that he wouldn't, and I'm sure he put in plenty of time practicing in his free time. Professional simulator time is so expensive, so I am sure PMDG can tap this market for real life professionals. FSX and the PMDG T7 can be especially valuable for long haul crew who spend most of their careers in cruise, I like to imagine that folks like the captain of this flight have an edge over their peers if they maintain their proficiency with constant practice at home with the same study quality addons we mere mortals enjoy. This incident is one of the biggest mysteries out there in recent memory, a puzzling event that has captured the interest of both aviation fanatics like ourselves and the world at large. Very tragic.

It's great to have AVSIM forums back. It felt very odd to have the forums down during the whole Malaysia 777 incident, I can't wait to see the discussion unfold to make up for lost time.

The flying Gatling gun. I am saddened to hear of the news, but all good things come to an end.

Ahh, the Pan Am shuttle. I still remember riding my bike up my street to watch flights on the STAR approach to KEWR in suburban Philadelphia, and I specifically remember the Pan Am 727's flying over on their gentle glide at 18000 ft. They stood out even with the naked eye because of the bold blue PAN AM titles, very easy to spot.

I used to be an avid X-planer back in the day. Quit in 2008 and moved to MSFS 9 and FSX because of the lack of a FMS for the tubeliners, but I'm happy to see this crucial feature featured prominently in some of the newer X-plane addons. I'd be quite excited to have a PMDG like CRJ in FSX, you must be having fun!

Excellent shots and commentary. Thanks for sharing!

I'm fine with the changes. I'm especially happy to see the image count limit removed on the SS forum!

This airline brings back great memories for me. I still remember flying on Eastern as a teenager for a trip to Disneyland in Orlando. Took a 727 from KPHL to KATL, where I switched to a L-1011 for the short hop to KMCO. Great airline, that and TWA, I miss those classics with the 727 and L-1011!

Lol, the author of the article asks about tackling the A380 next: "It's a pretty ugly plane"

I agree wholeheartedly with OP's statement. I have spent an inordinate amount of time tweaking my AI and freeware AFCAD files to my liking, with an eye towards uncompromising realism. That means using the latest and greatest models and paints for the world's biggest airlines, and accurate airline assignments at the gates, which change on an annual basis. I don't mind spending the time and effort I pour into this "sub hobby", but I lack a certain sense of accomplishment for the thousands of man hours invested over the years. If only I could give back to the community and have others share in my pride and joy. But alas, technical and copyright issues are a major hindrance. In an ideal world, it would be awesome to have a central, open source repository of models/paints/AFCADS stored in a central online database, and have it pushed to the users though a simple, painless process. Console games are able to update their maps and characters seamlessly upon initial loading, or according to the user's schedule, so I envision a similar concept for AI at least. It's a dream, I know, but I have given this idea much thought and it's a shame we can't have something like this. World of AI is the closest thing to a painfree, easy installation and update of AI, but it appears to be difficult for the authors to create, probably because permission has to be granted by all the parties who contribute to the final product, like the model,paint, and flight schedule creators. With that said about the AI aspect, I have always wanted to at least share my edits of freeware AFCADs, which are really just tweaks to the airline gate assignments or include the addition of crosswind runways for multiple runway usage. But I would have to ask for permission from the original authors, and chances are they would frown upon such work, even if credit is given, perhaps because having multiple iterations of the original file could confuse users, who knows.

Wow, I'm jealous. Vacations are an exciting event to look forward to, but they are even more thrilling for us airline fanatics, it's a double whammy of sorts! I remember my last flight on a 747-400, on BA118/119 between EGLL and VOBL (Bangalore India) back in 2009. I've been to India three times in the past 10 years, on a BA 777-200 in 2006, 747-400 in 2009, and the 777-200 this past July. It's great fun to replicate the flights from 2009 in the PMDG Queen while it was all the rage then, and 777 a month or so before the PMDG rollout. Shame that you will miss out on the Queen, but the 777 is a fun ride. There is nothing like experiencing an aircraft you enjoy in FSX in the real world, and if you are like me, you will take notes on what you observe and try to imitate the experience when you return home.

Yep, a central list stored on some website, maybe as a wikipage, of transition altitudes/levels is something I have always wished for. You can easily find this info on published charts of course, but it would make sense to have a quick "at a glance" chart published.

Excellent shot Hank. I take it you are using ActiveSkyNext, as that overcast depiction is unmistakeable.

Are you talking about parking on the side of the road right under the approach path of runway 35? It's always fun to have the CRJ's pass over, you really can hear the ghostly sounds of the wake as it hits the ground. Sometimes, with the right wind conditions, you can even smell the burnt rubber after jets land on 27R! I've spend many hours spotting all over hog island road, and remember fondly the pre 9/11 days when security left you alone. I even remember a little parking area right along side runway 27R, long before runway 26 was constructed, and where the current general aviation apron is. I would sometimes stop there during my break from college classes and plane spot while having lunch!

Great news. All I need now are SP1 and FS2crew and I can really really start operating the 777 as it was meant to be flown.

I take it you have Active Sky Next? That kind of weather was not simulated in a plausible fashion before ASN, especially turbulence, which even PMDG had advised to turn off as it would lead to unpredictable behavior.

I remember a few years back seeing a most popular boards widget. It was always a race between PMDG and the FSX forum, but it was a neat statistic to see. I believe it was limited to 3 or 5 forums. This table was particularly fun to see during the leadup to the release of the NGX.

I wonder if there is a way to have UTX on a higher priority over Orbx vector, so that we have global vector road data everywhere UTX is not active?

Not sure if PMDG has commented on this, but ASN has mentioned they are willing to work with developers to integrate their radar into the addon NDs. Here's hoping PMDG will take them up on this offer, as all indications point out that we finally have an accurate wx radar. Thanks to ASN, we can now enable turbulence in PMDG birds, even Tabs has acknowledged this breakthrough, I have to believe they will change their mind on their long held stance against FSX weather radars.

Poorly designed afcad parking spots and blatantly incorrect or blank airline gate assignments are a real pet peeve of mine. I don't understand why some developers don't spend the extra few hours to clean up such errors, especially with all the care and effort they put into manually placing buildings and adjusting taxiway nodes, why stop there?? Reminds me of some of the Imaginesim airfields, particularly KATL, where entire gates are missing. You can see the node where the taxiway should connect to the spot at the gate, but the actual link is missing. Again, it would just take a few minutes to an hour to clean up such glaringly obvious errors, it drives me nuts that they spend months upon months on their work but see the presentation of AI at their airports as an afterthought!

Don't give them any ideas! Another fee! Maybe they can add a quiet room for all the cell phone gabbers?

Great analysis. I see a parallel to the resurgence in OOMs, even in 64bit OS environments with 8 gigs of RAM or more, because the newer addons are placing more demands on scarce resources, through high definition textures in super HD clouds or aircraft liveries, or complex sceneries like the Drzewiecki Design New York city. FSX uses some very outdated, inefficient code and does not take advantage of the capabilities of the latest hardware, and there are plenty of people who just pile on complex addons to the point of choking their systems. Clouds are very resource hungry, and the new found enhancements in overcast depiction is guaranteed to bring some older systems to their knees, and new systems as well if the settings are set to high due to overconfidence by the user, like cloud draw distance and number of layers. I'm basically using the same settings from ASN and slowly moving up a notch or two to see how big the impact is before I settle with a final setting.