leaving the high terrain behind , heading East , Bolivia 
sunbathing over the plains
no wings and still … she flies
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Sure! I used it in MSFS2020, the inibuild A310 indeed, and it was stable in my situation. Had to change the throttle sensitivity and travel throught the A310 tablet, but this worked well. Otherwise the reversers came on before the throttles were in idle …
I saw you made it and landed the Pan Am Airbus safely in the end, congratulations!
We might see Pan Am Airbusses landing again in the (near?) future: New Pan Am Says It Plans To Fly A320neos | AirlineGeeks.com Would be great!
See you soon at the bar in our destination!
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Following the River Nile upstream/south with “Indiana Jones” DC-3 …
Leg 12: Egypt, HECA (Cairo International) => Egypt, HESN (Aswan International), MSFS2024, real-day, real-time, real-weather, DC-3, VFR:
Departure RW05L and leaving Cairo behind:
The River Nile with its green delta on both sides:
En-route, south, great day to cross the dessert to the south of Egypt:
Overflying the airports of Asyut and Luxor:
Towards Aswan International airport …:
Approaching Aswan International airport, final RW35 and landing:
Credits for Indiana Jones DC-3 livery: https://flightsim.to/file/61108/indiana-jones-series-douglas-dc-3-air-east-asia-from-raiders-of-the-lost-ark
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Is that the Sim Skunkworks Starfighter? Been debating picking it up, because I do love the manned missile.
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Great route! I considered it for my flying boat trek in the Latecoere, but decided I want the additional water in the Red Sea over the more confined Nile rive and related lakes! Great report.
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I’ll keep one (or more) cold for you at the bar! Since I had issues, I ended up air spawning for the approach and landing it.
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The trek continues, next we tackle Mogadishu to Mombasa and then towards Zanzibar.
Filling main from aux once more. This time much less fuel aboard than the previous leg, for a much safer landing experience…
We follow coasts in this Trek pretty much. Here we pass the Jabba River in southern Somalia.
For a change in pace we announce a touch & go at the Mombasa Moi airport, which we of course won’t execute fully without wheels. But we plan to water a few meters later.
Not sure if ground will be able to direct us to a proper anchor place.
Finally we settle down for our usual dock.
The next leg brings us from Mombasa to Zanzibar. We take off in oppsoite direction of the busy harbour, and evade all ship traffic.
Now this take-off was a bit special, as the flaps wouldn’t deploy. Only in the next flight I discovered that I had bound my throttle flaps lever and this seemingly cannot be overriden with the virtual cockpit.
Soon we’re feet wet.
Almost 320 km/h, that’s a record in level flight!
But there’s a problem. The autopilot altitude hold doesn’t work properly. After a quick bar run I come back to my seat to find us skipping over the water. Luckily no land anywhere in sight and the autopilot also didn’t turn us into a divebomber!
With a bit less trust in our systems we continue the flight and eventually arrive at the coast of Zanzibar. Another high speed watering, as we don’t have flaps deployed …
The next flight will either be another stop-over at the Comores or at the north coast of Madagascar. Getting into striking distance for the final leg.
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correct , thats the one . having lots of fun with her . perfect traveler 
shame I didnt pick up MiG25 in the last sale , was very cheap
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Time to speed (bird) up to reach Madagascar by Christmas …
Leg 13: Egypt, HESN (Aswan International) => Kenya, HKJK (Nairobi, Jomo Kenyatta Intl), MSFS2020, real-day, real-time, real-weather, Concorde, IFR:
Plan was to use MSFS2024, but the old lady did not want to rotate at take-off … Hence using MSFS2020 instead, where she did fine. Probably identical to the real Concorde, but the AutoPilot of Concorde and I are not a good match. Speed and altitude logic are “interesting” and the VOR’s were more or less U/S, so I was vectored all the way by ATC.
Departure RW35, over the Aswan High Dam:
Leaving the Nile behind, direction Jedda:
En-route, south, over the Red See, avoiding dangerous Sudan and Yemen, reaching Mach 2:
Concorde engineering and service:
Over Eritrea and Ethiopia:
Descending over Kenya:
Approaching Nairobi, same IMC weather, final RW06 and landing:
Roughly now at the equator!
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Yeah, the Concorde AP is a bit of a mystery at times, but it’s still a pretty amazing bird.
Nice job!
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I agree , pretty amazing , but I cant make myself to mount this bird
too complicated just looking at the cockpit . Learjet is the most airliner-like experience I am keen to accept solo .
wish these civi sims have multicrew support
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In fact there is a way to multicrew operations in MSFS:
https://flightsim.to/file/5383/yourcontrols-shared-cockpit-for-msfs
Have used it and it worked …
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Supported aircraft:
… even Concorde.
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Today it’s time for the mini-baby boeing, the RJ70. Absolutely tiny and adorable and by far my favourite variant!
Lets get some power to the galley for a cup of coffee and some lights in the cabin.
Turns out sitting on the tarmac soaking up the son leaves the cabin quite hot, fortunately all doors need to open up to get some PAX and catering in so we quickly get the APU going to lower the duct temperatures.
Soon enough everyone is on board and we can get APU… I mean Engine, one turning.
Now the fun started, I noticed that the TRP(Thrust Regulation Panel) wasn’t working, I had some advisories on the AP1/AP2’s apparently. I think it was a bug because I did all the right bits and bobs on starting but they simply wouldn’t activate and I wasn’t going to fly a 2hr leg by hand…
So, saved the flightplan, reloaded on the runway with engines running and off I went.
Goodbye Bangui! You were very dusty!
It sure looks like a city with a million inhabitants from the air! Didn’t ever get this impression from bing maps!
Climbing out you can see where the water gathers in the valleys, it shows quite a bit of tree growth.
An uneventful cruise happened and soon enough we are decending into Bangoka Intl, the METAR didn’t show thunderstorms but this does look spicey. It said MVFR and well, there’s no ILS or known approach charts(on the free websites).
I opted to do a manual 10nm DME approach until the localizer lined up with the runway, some fun practice!
After all this sandy desert it is nice to get into these thick tree covered area’s!
And it looks like the airport is covered in thunderstorms…
Starting my freshly designed approach
Mr Copilot argued that we should start deploying flaps and slats and I agreed.
And I forgot that the localizer is aligned with the runway, but quite a bit of distance from the threshold so… A go around it is!
Coming round again it all goes well this time.
Its a long long runway though, I just let the aircraft roll out to the far end without using the brakes. Saves on turn around time!
And it’s time for deboarding!
My own janky approach, it was quite bumpy but this plane can fly slow so I did it okay’ish enough to stay around the 10nm, I think I varied at most .2nm though obviously not good enough for a real approach I suppose.
Finally done with the long long long legs… Soon off to Entebe and might stop at a few airports along the way. These long cruise distances bore me so much. It is nice to fly straight through Africa though, it is a unique scenery to journey along!
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The time has come also for me to make the last entry into the Christmas Flight 2025 logbook.
Let’s not get too emotional about it, shall we?
I thought I picked the Northern Air Cargo livery for this flight (because what else to fly in the Southern hemisphere ) but it seems that I mis-clicked the livery.
Either way, the Berlin Airlift will have to do as well.
Leaving the island of La Reunion behind.
The distance between my departure and destination airports is about 500 nm. I just glanced over the map and then closed it to up the stakes. No moving map, no GPS. But maybe I should have spent a bit more time planning… as it showed later.
Anyway, the plan was to fly Saint Pierre VOR outbound radial 270 from La Reunion towards Madagascar. As that VOR would cover only 60 nm, I would then keep the heading, follow the coast south once over Madagascar, pick the Tolagnaro NDB and fly NDB-DME approach to rwy 08.
Easier said than done. As usual
Here I am climbing to FL190 following that outbound radial.
Interestingly enough, the VOR signal was much stronger than what the map suggested and it led my way for almost 200 nm. Nice.
But when the signal finally faded away, I stopped enjoying the scenery and turned my attention to planning.
Simple maths as always. Maybe too simple this time.
- The total distance is around 500 nm. I was not sure about the exact track miles distance but it will have to do. I will factor in some margins.
- The VOR helped me cover some 200 nm. That leaves me with further 300+ nm to go. The question is, when to start descending?
- I need to get from FL190 to some 3000 ft over the NDB (well, the chart depicts 4500 ft when overflying the station and 2500 ft when commencing the approach; but I did not know that yet). In any case, I need to descend 16000 feet which at 3 degrees profile means I will cover some 50ish nm in the process. Add to it 20 nm to decelerate and 10 nm for the approach and I am looking at some 220 nm to reach my TOD. There is a number of wrong assumptions here, btw. But before we get into them…
- The DC-6 descends at some 5 nm a minute, so I estimated that it would cruise at about 4 nm a minute. Quick and dirty math (quick yes and dirty definitely) and I decided to fly for about 50 minutes before starting the descent.
- Now:
- The usual descend profile I fly in DC-6 is 1000 ft/min resulting in 5 nm a minute. So not a 3 degrees descent. Had a calculated with this usual profile, I would have concluded that only the descend would cover 80 nm (and not 50 nm)
- Next is the deceleration and approach - I completely disregarded the NDB-DME approach flown which would add some 20is nm to the track miles flown. Maybe this would compensate a bit the issue above?
- The usual descend profile I fly in DC-6 is 1000 ft/min resulting in 5 nm a minute. So not a 3 degrees descent. Had a calculated with this usual profile, I would have concluded that only the descend would cover 80 nm (and not 50 nm)
- The last bit to this planning mess is that the direct distance between the two airports is 520 nm to which I needed to add the extra track miles for not flying direct route + the approach.
In the end all that means I started the descend waaay too early.
But who cares? No passengers behind and cargo does not complain
Eventually I spotted the land and turned South-West to follow the coast. Decelerating in the process.
The hand flown non-precision approach was the cherry on the cake
Quite a stiff crosswind put me sideways on the finals and I followed with a firm landing which was more of an arrival than anything else.
But I blame the crosswind, of course.
And here we are!
These Christmas flights are becoming an integral part of my pre-Christmas period and I am happy we organise them every year. Thank you all for your attention and comments. I am heading to the bar 
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Great job @apollon01!
I need to get my act in gear or there’s going to be nothing left at the bar but American beer which, as my Chaplain once informed me, was like having sex in a canoe…
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I was attempting to be respectful [Edit: by leaving out the profanity]…this is a family program! 
Disregard the snarky tone of the link. It was meant with all bonhomie! 
I just couldn’t edit the link message.
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OMG, but is that not a sex machine right there?
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I am happy that you created such a great AAR.
I won’t be able to make the trip this year, for the first time in eight years I think. You live near me, globally speaking, and chose a very similar route as I did while planning the trip that I didn’t end up taking as it turned out. You even mentioned my home town when you overflew it on your second leg.
So by following your AAR it makes me feel almost like I was taking part in this flight, which makes me happy.
Cheers!
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