ClearedtoLand

I don't think it is unnecessarily splitting hairs. So far, a majority have argued that no matter how many hours one has on a PMDG plane, a simmer could not safely get the aircraft on the ground. It follows from that, that sim flying, even PMDG aircraft, does not provide one with adequate skills to manage a survivable landing. I'll emphasise an autoland here, as any other option than that has been thoroughly dismantled. If that is the case, then what advantage does a proficient PMDG simmer have over a complete novice? If the PMDG person cannot manage to produce a better outcome than a complete novice, and the majority view seems to point in that direction, both will crash, then what reason is there to pick the PMDG simmer over the complete novice? None, it would seem, which leads to an interesting conclusion, namely that if the decision about who to choose were down to me, and I chose the novice on the basis that a crash is inevitable either way, they won't fault my reasoning. This is the reason that I disagreed with the unnecessarily splitting hairs assessment. How many of us would really choose the novice on the basis that the outcome they will manage, a crash, is at least the same as the outcome the PMDG simmer will manage, also a crash? As a side note, though one which adds an interesting perspective to your response. Confidence, generally, is a poor indicator of success, and may even reduce the chances of a favourable outcome, however limited. So, you may be right that people would choose a confident person to take the lead, but they would be better off putting their fate in the hands of a cautious individual. However, since we are speculating on how people will react in such a scenario, I doubt many will stop to bring this up, so I agree with the sentiment.

Agreed. But I do wonder how many simmers would opt for hand flying a 737 in this scenario. I won't. I also think that whoever is given the responsibility of talking the poor person down would state at the outset that the autopilot remains engaged all the way to the point where the aircraft has come to a complete stop at the end of the runway.

That question answers itself, and there would not even be a discussion about it. The scenario I'm wondering about is one in which the option of a pilot, even one with limited experience, is not available. Let's say your choice is between a guy like Erich here, and someone who has no flying or simming experience at all, who would be the choice then? If the choice is Erich, or any other PMDG NGX simmer, over the other brave volunteer, what is that decision based on? Bearing in mind that the outcome is not going to be anything approaching the outcome had a type rated pilot been the volunteer, so we accept the inherent risk involved. Yes, but this hijacking scenario is, as unlikely as it is, the most likely scenario during which this fantasy of the proficient PMDG pilot being called upon to take control could be played out. I think it falls within the scope of the original question. It also takes into consideration all of the objections raised without discounting the risk and starts from the assumption that it is not going to be a great result. Starting from there, I ask whether, if our lives depended on it, we would have more* faith in a proficient PMDG pilot than we would in someone who is neither a pilot, nor a proficient PMDG simmer. *More being relative.

Well, not just in hypothetical scenarios. The same mental processes which lead people to over estimate their abilities during hypothetical scenarios are also active under every day practical conditions. So, to the question, could they, you say someone might, but most won't. To the question, should they try nonetheless, you would say, yes, given that it is a last resort?

Again, I'm not disputing your assessment of the likely outcome, I'm asking whether, knowing the likely outcome, people would conclude that there is no point in even taking the chance. In short, is the agreement that a person with 1000 hours + on the PMDG 737 will have no better chance of getting a better outcome in the above scenario than someone who views simulators as only slightly better than watching paint dry, and as such, they shouldn't even try at all. Are we keeping you from doing something more important?

Definitely try AVSIM, I think. They look good.

I also consider myself a fairly experienced PMDG 737 pilot, but it's definitely NOT my fantasy ... I've seen enough of my landings to know that I never want to be in a situation like that. But if it's a choice between taking THAT risk, or dying in any case, I'd take the risk. I would be under no illusions as to the probable outcome, but if it saves 1 person out of 140, that's already a better outcome than taking no chance at all. So the question remains, should Captain PC Hero Pilot try, or not?

I understand what you are saying, and based on your figures, would you choose to say no to Captain PC Hero Pilot taking the controls because there is a more than 75% chance of no survivors were they to take control, with a more than 90% chance of the plane being wrecked in the event, against a 100% chance of no survivors and the plane being wrecked if Captain Nutter and his crew remain in control? To be clear, the choice here is between certain disaster and highly probable disaster.

I'm curious about what happens when we rephrase the question that has cropped up, you're a passenger on a plane where a nutter or some nutters with a grudge against the airline or some other chip on their shoulder have killed the pilots and taken control of the plane. You don't know what their intensions are, but you know from the amount of time the plane has flown over open ocean that you are no longer going anywhere near your original destination. And so a decision is made to try to retake the plane, a few inventive guys fashion a means for disassembling the cockpit door, and the plan hinges on there being a Boeing 737 800 pilot on board, which, there isn't. There is a someone who has spent a lot of time on the PMDG 737. Bearing in mind all the points made above about how simming is not flying, would you want this person to have a go at trying to land the plane? Yes or no.

I'm just wondering whether, when the pilot input the coordinates, he was relying on the computer to inform him if he had made a mistake. Put another way, did the pilot interpret the absence of any obvious warning of error to be a confirmation that his entry was correct? That goes beyond mere CRM and would point towards areas of improvement in crew and computer interaction. I don't have any experience in Airbus automated flight systems, but I once made a similar mistake when setting up the FMC on the 737NGX and the FMC returned a message to alert me to the discrepancy between where I told the plane it was and where its onboard GPS system indicated it really was. I quickly rectified the error. I would be surprised if the Airbus systems don't have a similar function. If it does, then it would be worth looking at the way in which it alerts the crew of an input error. If it doesn't have a similar warning system in place, well ... I would go beyond that and suggest that when it comes to designing aircraft flight computers, it would be worth drawing on the experience of cognitive scientists. It has only been over the last forty years that psychology has started to piece together how badly even a fully functional brain operates, and the obvious risks that this poses for our behaviour. And to put that into perspective, the 747 has been flying for longer than we have understood the way in which our minds find creative ways to malfunction in the name of evolutionary expedience. I would say that with SOP's and experience comes certainty, and with certainty comes a reluctance to question our actions, this is a scientifically proven fact. And though obviously, most pilots get this right most of the time, a recognition of the limitations of the human mind, and the accompanying penchant, for making seemingly incomprehensible mistakes, would help us to design systems that take into consideration very real human limitations like seeing what we want to see, even when what we claim to have seen is not what was actually there, such as one number in a long sequence being out of place. There is no amount of training in procedures or experience in flying which can counteract the mind's tendency for taking short cuts with devastating consequences, but a recognition of this fact about the mind and incorporating it into how flight computers interact with pilots can help us design systems which provide a check on mental inefficiency.

Search the file library here on AVSIM using the search phrase, Alf's UK airfrields. It should return 4 pages of what you are looking for. I only use one of his airfields as it is the one outside the town I live in, and you can certainly get a Cherokee and a Cessna in there. I hope it helps.

Or the occasional premium economy passenger who skips dinner, has four Gin and Tonics and then, while asleep (passed out?) proceeds to punch the fellow next to him twice ... I'm not buying the 747 v3 without a cast iron guarantee from PMDG that this scenario has been modelled. That was not the sort of mile high club I was hoping to join, no matter how exclusive it may be.

As usual, Major, you are spot on. Diego Garcia is on a rolling lease (If I remember correctly) from the UK. The island does have a bit of a controversial history and makes the news here in the UK from time to time, but that is not a subject to be discussed here. I think that if you are going to be based anywhere on US Armed Forces deployment, Diego Garcia has to be one of the most scenic bases. And I think you more than most here knows its strategic value to the US Airforce, as such, one can't just rock up there on a pleasure flight and ask to go sight seeing. For the flight that I did I imagined I was flying some high ranking military officials back to the USA. The scenery I used for my flight had the B 52s parked outside, but it's been a while since I installed it so I don't remember all the details about it. Now I am tempted to go and look for it again. I enjoyed reading your bit of insider history on the island, it's always good to get a glimpse of just how professional and skilled our men and women in uniform are.

For anyone interested in non commercial routes on the 737, you can consider getting a nice scenery file for the US base at Diego Garcia, and use that as a refuelling stop from anywhere in Asia to back to the USA. My longest leg was a BBJ from Diego Garcia to somewhere in West Africa, I can't remember the exact route, but it came in at over 11 hours. Full fuel, pilots, four passengers, and not much in terms of luggage.

That beached plane looks like the end result of one of my landings.

Precisely. That's one of the reasons that I never thought much of the issue myself. There doesn't appear to be an obvious pattern to the cause, it is very infrequent, it doesn't affect anything else in the performance of the aircraft and given the absence of other users reporting a similar issue on here, I don't even think it's a problem caused by PMDG add-ons. Maybe third party liveries.

It happens with either installation method. Off the top of my head, I recall seeing this issue after manually installing quite an old Shenzhen Airlines livery manually, but the Pegasus Airlines and SAA livery were installed through the Operations Center. It is worth pointing out though that I have manually installed a Rwandair livery which did not present this problem. Like Jack, I had large number of liveries installed when I was still using MS FSX, but I have not yet installed them all in FSX SE, and I have not yet experienced this issue in FSX SE. I apologise if I am giving you a bunch of random and unrelated info here, but I am hoping that if I can provide you with enough info, it would help you to eliminate anything that isn't a contributing factor.

I have infrequently experienced this before as well, but I didn't look into it in as much depth as you have, I would load an aircraft, say Pegasus 737 800, call sign Sunturk and reg TC- AAL, do a flight, exit the sim and on the next occasion, this could be half an hour to a few days later, load a different aircraft, say South African Airways call sign Springbok and reg ZS-SJV. When I go to select the SAA aircraft, it would have Sunturk listed as call sign and show TC-AAL as its reg. It happened with other variants as well. At that point I would simply correct those in the UI before proceeding with the flight. I don't recall ever seeing the call sign and reg number listed incorrectly in the aircraft.cfg files, so what causes the confusion, I am not sure, but because it was such an easy work around, I never actually bothered to even look it up (when something doesn't quite work the way it says its going to work, I assume a mistake on my part, in this instance, being careless when installing the livery). Occasionally this would happen after installing a new livery, but as it is not always the case, I'm not sure whether that is related, or whether it would be related to installing a livery that is maybe older, or contains some other error. Kyle asked about add-ons, so I will list a few, but I am not really sure whether any of these would be a contributing factor since I have experienced this before adding some of these to the sim. PMDG 737 NGX (600/700/800/900) PMDG 777 200LR/300ER ** A2A Cessna 172 ** A2A Cessna 182 ** A2A Piper Cherokee ** ASN ** Editvoicepack ** MyTraffic 6 ** Aerosoft Airbus Bundle ** FSUIPC ** The ** after the add-on indicates that I had already experienced this problem prior to installing that particular add-on. And about 90 scenery add-ons ... I'm hoping I don't have to list all of those.

Ron, for some reason I can't quote your post, but that last post of yours just cracked me up. I wish more people had your sense of humour.

I bought Narita a few months ago (no discount for me sadly), and I have no complaints about it, either in terms of visual representation or performance while using primarily the PMDG 777. The other aircraft I use with it is the PMDG 737, and no complaints there either.

Well, aren't you just in luck :smile:. I have spent a few hours tonight downloading and organising liveries for the NGX after moving to FSX SE recently, so I came across the ones you requested, I sent you the links. I hope they are the right ones, as I am currently also working my way through a bottle of red wine, there might be a chance that I sent you links to some pizza place ... in which case I sincerely apologise.

Thanks for sharing, I always look at your scenery with envy. I guess I could get scenery like this, but the best my system would afford me with such detail is to ride around on a bicycle that has no VAS footprint whatsoever.

Awesome bird, what was your cruising altitude and speed?

This bird just looks good, still can't decide whether to get XPX just for this one, or whether to ride it out and wait for the FSX version. Maybe some airport shopping will help me decide.

Hi everyone, This is the first time that I have posted anything in this request thread, so before I proceed, I want to get the most important thing out of the way. Thank you very much to everyone on here who has taken the time to do repaints for the NGX, it is, quite simply, my favourite PDMG aircraft, and I have around 70 different liveries for airlines all around world. An enormous amount of the satisfaction that I get from my simming is made possible by the contributions of everyone on here who takes the time to gift the various liveries they have created to the rest of us. Being based near Stansted, I have quite a few Ryanair liveries (by quite a few I mean, anything that anyone has done for Ryanair, I have), and I recently saw that Ryanair has stepped into the British EU referendum debate by branding aircraft EI-EFP as Ryanair says Yes to Europe. I was wondering whether anyone would be interested in doing a repaint for it? Thanks in advance.