Musings from a Budget Airline Captain

For the past couple of days I have taken a semi-break from my latest crack addiction Cities Skylines to revisit some older tried and true titles to provide some gaming balance. One of those go to games is Microsoft Flight Simulator X where I love to pilot (from takeoff to landing) a virtual Boeing 737-800. My go to route is Jacksonville to Daytona because it is an easy and short flight that covers all of the bases of navigation.

FSX Stress Test

I hadn’t flown much lately in FSX, so after watching about a week of Air Crash Investigations on YouTube (I wish that show was on Netflix), I decided to brush up on my waning skill set with my preferred aircraft, the Boeing 737-800. I have a couple of saved approach flights where I can load them to practice final approach and an ILS landing, as well as a full flight plan from Tampa to Miami, FL. After successfully running a scenario to simulate an ILS landing at Miami, I decided to do the full flight.

MS FSX Boeing 737-800 IFR Flight Plan

Microsoft Flight Simulator X came out back in late 2006 and is the last installment of the vaunted Flight Simulator series prior to the release of the much maligned MS Flight platform which proved to be an abysmal failure (ultimately resulting in its discontinuation). I last had flown MS FS 2002 logging dozens of hours in a Cessna prop plane and Lear Jet becoming somewhat of a master using VOR to VOR routing, but quickly lost interest in the genre and completely skipped Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight.