In FS2020 today, I planned a route from ATL-DOH but for whatever reason, I put OMDB instead of OTHH which means that I was flying to Dubai instead of Doha! I only found out about this a few hours into the flight and I legit just facepalmed myself. Anyways, I luckily corrected the error by changing the destination airport in the FMS, deleting and adding some waypoints and reprogramming the approach and STAR. What I did was probably highly unrealistic but at this point, the existing route I had was efficient enough to still just divert to Doha. But boy oh boy do I feel like an idiot after that!

How about you guys? What was the dumbest mistake that you've ever made in any flight sim (as a rookie or as an experienced player)?

Add on testing and using fuel dump. The fuel went empty in one tank and then ticked over to 1,000,000kg!

The plane did a very high speed descent to the ocean. Bug logged and fixed later (before release). A perfect result.

My sim of choice is FSX so that's where my stories come from:

When I was a kid and first learning about airplanes and flying, I used to take off by setting altitude and vertical speed values in the autopilot, turning the AP on, advancing the throttles, and pressing the alt hold button at around 130 knots. Without touching the yoke at all, the plane would rotate itself and fly to the selected altitude. Completely unrealistic but funny.

I've also inadvertently left the autopilot on before and after landing, then wondered why my flight controls were stuck at full deflection.

On several occasions I've blown right past the top of descent point and put the plane into a dive 20-30 miles from the airport. Made it in but the pax probably weren't thrilled

N965UW wrote:

My sim of choice is FSX so that's where my stories come from:

......

On several occasions I've blown right past the top of descent point and put the plane into a dive 20-30 miles from the airport. Made it in but the pax probably weren't thrilled

You need Concorde. Do a "Fall Off The Wall" descent (aka the Washington descent). I was quite surprised at that procedure and wonder how often it was used since it seemed to be quite official.

You can also arm the idle reverse on the inboard engines then use the idle reverse to quicken the descent.

Boeing757100 wrote:

In FS2020 today, I planned a route from ATL-DOH but for whatever reason, I put OMDB instead of OTHH which means that I was flying to Dubai instead of Doha! I only found out about this a few hours into the flight and I legit just facepalmed myself. Anyways, I luckily corrected the error by changing the destination airport in the FMS, deleting and adding some waypoints and reprogramming the approach and STAR. What I did was probably highly unrealistic but at this point, the existing route I had was efficient enough to still just divert to Doha. But boy oh boy do I feel like an idiot after that!

How about you guys? What was the dumbest mistake that you've ever made in any flight sim (as a rookie or as an experienced player)?

I want to say this was FS2004. I was planning on landing at KEWR using ILS. In FS2004, the frequency for one of the rwy 22 runways at EWR and rwy 22 at LGA was programmed with the same ILS frequency. The weather was overcast with low visibility. As I was getting closer to the ground, I told myself, "there isn't water in front of Newark like that". I thought that maybe the FS2004 landclass wasn't loading. But after I touched down did I realize I landed on rwy 22 at LGA. Mega-facepalm moment.

Very old episode, in the F/A-18 game for Macintosh. Mid or late 1990ies.

I was zooming towards a bridge that needed to be destroyed. Hey, I thought, at that difficulty grade I could just fly ahead of the strike force, and take out the antiaircraft gun with... er... my cannon. From previous tries I knew where they were located, and so I just could fly a couple feet above the Euphrates river and when the bridge comes in sight: Banzaiii!

Well, something made a big kaboom just in front of my nose.

It was a friendly bomb.

---

Today, I use FlightGear. I often do the short 25 nm hop from Grenchen (LSZG) to Basel (BSL) to train my hand-flown CAT II and III ILS skills. The worse the weather and the faster the jet... you get it.

Flight progress goes BOINK! because I forgot to look up those hills' altitude.

In real life, I see those hills each and every day.

I made tons of embarrassing errors in X Plane 9. When I first started using it I was pretty much just learning through trial and error. It took awhile for me to have a steady speed on final approach, while before I was always going too fast and used reverse thrust and speed brakes while I was still in the air.

I forget where in Africa, but I remember heading to a city which had an international airport and military base close to each other. I was going to the international airport, and despite checking the map several times to make sure I was on course I still ended up at the military base.

During a flight to PHX with a 737, a Concorde overtook me with only 500 or so feet difference in altitude. The jet wash caused severe turbulence for my plane.

I'm sure countless times I either landed just short of the runway or overshot the runway. One time in a fully loaded 747 I took off on a really long runway and the main gear lifted off the ground literally at the edge of the runway. I took a screenshot of it but it's lost somewhere on the old Mac.

af773atmsp wrote:

During a flight to PHX with a 737, a Concorde overtook me with only 500 or so feet difference in altitude. The jet wash caused severe turbulence for my plane.

I don't know if I would really call that a mistake, that's just simple physics.

Anyway, here's mine, and also an example as to why you don't fly tired.

https://clips.twitch.tv/ProudCuteNigiri ... OSWBoMoq6F
https://clips.twitch.tv/SavoryHomelyKal ... cSr4k9qGBh
https://clips.twitch.tv/SilkyUnsightlyG ... WfAuCGUtQd
https://clips.twitch.tv/OutstandingTend ... 01oOcjO7Tg
https://clips.twitch.tv/HardTemperedSar ... n16zjfiu24

I wondered why the LX-DIO 737 BBJ I was using wasn't able to go Nice to Dubai,

Turns out by default it doesn't have the AUX fuel tanks specified and you have to manually configure them in the PMDG options. Wish I could just set that by default.

Its a flight simulator being used in the privacy of my own home, why would I be embarrassed of anything while playing it?

ACDC8 wrote:

Its a flight simulator being used in the privacy of my own home, why would I be embarrassed of anything while playing it?

Maybe embarrassed isn't the right word, but just "what are the dumbest mistakes you've made while flight simming" as anything can be dumb to one self.

Hi,

Many thanks and as more of an old-timer I guess in flightsim I can't remember anything specific although I'm sure I started a flight or two by just running off the runway somehow before quickly restarting! Not to mention a few times or more getting kinda lost when trying to fly IFR with Fs9 ATC and losing contact on a STAR?

But as for more embarrassing in front of others I think I remember trying to do the Fsx A380 Paris Airshow mission with my brother watching maybe which was not fun as for me it was not an easy mission. And the worst was in Fs9 trying to do things like the IFR checkride with the voice of Rod (or Rob?) Machado telling me sorry I had failed again and again and again!

But ah some good times though in general so many thanks at least for the memories(!),

Ps762

Ps762 wrote:

Hi,

Many thanks and as more of an old-timer I guess in flightsim I can't remember anything specific although I'm sure I started a flight or two by just running off the runway somehow before quickly restarting! Not to mention a few times or more getting kinda lost when trying to fly IFR with Fs9 ATC and losing contact on a STAR?

But as for more embarrassing in front of others I think I remember trying to do the Fsx A380 Paris Airshow mission with my brother watching maybe which was not fun as for me it was not an easy mission. And the worst was in Fs9 trying to do things like the IFR checkride with the voice of Rod (or Rob?) Machado telling me sorry I had failed again and again and again!

But ah some good times though in general so many thanks at least for the memories(!),

Ps762

They need to bring back Martha and John King! I can’t remember if they were FS2004 or earlier?

cpd wrote:

They need to bring back Martha and John King! I can’t remember if they were FS2004 or earlier?

Hi (again thanks only apologies for a little delay and going a bit off-topic),

But yes also many thanks for that memory as well. I guess for me having kinda jumped from Fs98 to Fs2004 they may have been on my main screen in Fs2004? And then Lane Wallace was presenting the historical stuff and Rob Machado did the lessons and tests? Either way I should have probably spent a little more time on those pages. From what I remember they were all pretty nicely done.

But of course not for me at that time. Only real-world PPL manuals and POH reference charts and WAC charts would I trust back then!

Anyway with many thanks again only sorry again for that being a bit off-topic,

Ps762

cpd wrote:

They need to bring back Martha and John King! I can’t remember if they were FS2004 or earlier?

FS2000 IIRC

I never noticed what were they about in early MSFS?
I know them as famous real world video-instructors and school owners - by name only.

Back to topic: Sort of embarrassing was the fact that I could "perfectly" sim fly with no joystick or pedals but just with a mouse (that early roundish design iMac mouse if your know what I mean) before I learned the real deal flying in gliders the proper way.

How many MSFS gamers while being occasional real aircraft passengers might quietly hope for both pilots having had "the fish"?

Noshow wrote:

Sort of embarrassing was the fact that I could "perfectly" sim fly with no joystick or pedals but just with a mouse (that early roundish design iMac mouse if your know what I mean)

The round iMac mouse? Ouch, the pains... I quickly ditched it for a Logitech mouse! But I got to be an expert in keyboard flying in the F/A-18 Mac game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u7qW2306_k

One of the fun things was landing on the oil tanker, with just 1-2 knots above stalling speed. Of course the game ignored wind shear and stuff...

If you flew the F/A-18 at about 10-20 knots above stalling speed, you could land and take off from everywhere. So I turned to a Harrier tactic: Zooming to a place with full afterburner, landing somewhere, and when the enemy is flying overhead, I take off and engage them.

Or the endless attempts to circle into that volcano crater on Hawaii, and trying to land inside it. The crater had a cylinder shape, with a flat bottom.

Noshow wrote:

How many MSFS gamers while being occasional real aircraft passengers might quietly hope for both pilots having had "the fish"?

I admit I dream of that, too, sometimes! After all, flight simmers know some very important things about landing an aircraft. But one cannot simulate screwing up and losing the life...

I seem to remember the final mission of F/A-18 was to nuke some dam. But the sim was great and of unheard "pro" quality and frame rate. Still more about systems and weapons than eye candy.

Noshow wrote:

I seem to remember the final mission of F/A-18 was to nuke some dam. But the sim was great and of unheard "pro" quality and frame rate. Still more about systems and weapons than eye candy.

Yes, yes! The last mission was bombing a dam.

The game ran very fluid on the Apple LC III (25 MHz, 4 MB RAM, 80 MB hard drive). The flight physics felt very, very natural, especially with heavy weapons and fuel loads. You were basically a sitting duck when carrying 4 x Mk 84 bombs. But when you approached a stall, you didn't see any buffeting - the nose just begins to drop rather quickly.

I loved thinking about the perfect weapon loadout for every mission.

flyingturtle wrote:

Noshow wrote:

How many MSFS gamers while being occasional real aircraft passengers might quietly hope for both pilots having had "the fish"?

I admit I dream of that, too, sometimes! After all, flight simmers know some very important things about landing an aircraft. But one cannot simulate screwing up and losing the life...

I guess I've been exposed... But I guess you can simulate accidentally doing something wrong in FSX, XP11 or FS2020

I literally forgot to turn on seatbelt signs until after T/O on all the flights I did this week in FS2020.

FSX, E175, took off and climbed north of FL200 wondering why i was getting such awful climb rates at such a low altitude (like 500fpm at climb thrust at FL200, should be closer to 2000fpm), switched to the external view for the first time all flight to realize i left the gear down after takeoff.

So much work flying the Rwy1 departure following the rnav line over the river, i forgot to pull the wheels up

I have a list as they could be mistakes I make IRL if I’m not careful.

1. Gear down landing at AUS… with the a320.

2. Circled to the wrong runway end at Cotulla (landed with a tailwind).

3. Lost too much airspeed with this particular a340-600, and stalled and crashed on final.

4. Early mistake in my sim flying. Had the default 747 on a climb with the autopilot. Climb rate was too high at higher altitudes. I came back to see the airplane stalled and plummeting. All you could see was the tail as the rest of the plane was submerged in the ground!

CarlosSi wrote:

1. Gear down landing at AUS… with the a320.

Isn't that what you want when you land. Certainly you don't want to land with the gear up.

AirKevin wrote:

CarlosSi wrote:

1. Gear down landing at AUS… with the a320.

Isn't that what you want when you land. Certainly you don't want to land with the gear up.

Hahahahaha, for some reason things being down normally sounds like a bad thing.

CarlosSi wrote:

AirKevin wrote:

CarlosSi wrote:

1. Gear down landing at AUS… with the a320.

Isn't that what you want when you land. Certainly you don't want to land with the gear up.

Hahahahaha, for some reason things being down normally sounds like a bad thing.

Gear down means wheels down. Gear up means wheels up. You wouldn't want to land wheels up.

AirKevin wrote:

CarlosSi wrote:

AirKevin wrote:

Isn't that what you want when you land. Certainly you don't want to land with the gear up.

Hahahahaha, for some reason things being down normally sounds like a bad thing.

Gear down means wheels down. Gear up means wheels up. You wouldn't want to land wheels up.

Yeah I know, my mistake.

Flipping a plane upside down during descent into SAN. Turned off autopilot which caused it.

On the original MSFS back in the late 1980s I did not know how to land. So I would take off from Meigs Field and fly into a skyscraper in downtown Chicago.

Disclaimer: This is an attempt at humor and I am not encouraging or suggesting that anyone actually do this or attempt this.

I can remember a few funny things in FSX that I or my father did. I remember he was on final approach, and the default CRJ900 (i think, if not it was a 700) flew past him with about 75 feet separation, a little high, and at about 170kts. Young me jumped in suprise seeing the jet do that, but my father, stoic as ever, proceeded to make a beautiful landing nonetheless. As far as my experience in FS2020, I had a few funny moments, flying to the wrong airport in Berlin (Tegel), landing in the park that was formerly Meigs Field, flying into Chicago Midway from the lake side and damn near colliding with a building in downtown in heavy IMC because I was too low. I have pulled off the Ryanair bounce when I was younger, can't now regardless of how hard I try. When I was younger I'd fly the FSX F/A-18C from my hometown to Houston with max fuel at full afterburner. I made it across the state line into Texas before dropping like a rock just West of Beaumont. I dove the A321-200 from 35k to 3k at an 85 degree down angle on a "tactical" approach once as well. Passengers might've killed me on the ground, but I didn't find out cuz I crashed just shy of the runway. I also remember flying the B-52 once, and it just stayed on the ground but "flew" if you will. Turns out young me gave the pilot 210125lbs of weight in the weight and balance page before the flight.... Not my best moment.

I only flew it once at a friend's house. I promptly crashed that Virgin Atlantic B747 to the water lol

AirKevin wrote:

CarlosSi wrote:

1. Gear down landing at AUS… with the a320.

Isn't that what you want when you land. Certainly you don't want to land with the gear up.

I assumed an especially short runway, which requires some additional braking.

Fs2004 lover here also.

I often forget to close the main doors. Whether big or small aircraft. I’m not an external view kinda guy but just for kicks I’ll head outside during the flight at least once once in cruise to admire my aircraft. Looking in horror at the main door open. Some aircraft are linked to having a starting cart attached etc if the doors are open. Which looks hilarious while.flying along.

Then I also have to deal with all kinds of things as at least one of my two cats walks all over the keyboard. Dropping the gear and flaps at cruise altitude and Mach 0.84 in my 747 needs some explaining to my VA as ACARS lights up with many indiscretions. Lol.

I crashed a Saab 340 into the terminals at JFK after losing an engine and having negative autocoarsen.

Maybe not too embarrassing considering how hard it is not to crash in that situation.

This was in a Level D sim.

One of my most embarrassing mistakes was doing the Melbourne to London via Singapore, flew out of Singapore no problem every thing ok walked away for a few hours only to come back and realise I had forgot to put on the VOR switch on and I ended up some where over the Himalayas

Shut the flight and start again lol

I've certainly forgotten to arm a switch or two on the autopilot panel, then get frustrated that the aircraft isn't following the LNAV route only to learn that the problem is between my ears.

Over the weekend, I was on final to Kuwait in the updated 787-10 in MSFS, and I had recently programmed some custom wing views. Descending through about 2,500 feet, I panned over to take a look. My key command to return to the cockpit view is shift+A. Well, my finger slipped and I either hit alt+A or ctrl+A, which is apparently the key command for "shut off both engines".
Back in the cockpit, I start the APU and begin the inflight restart procedure. At this point, I haven't deployed the gear yet and we're at flaps 15, so the Dreamliner is gliding quite nicely. The whole time, I'm reminding myself "aviate, navigate, communicate". After what felt like an eternity but was probably 30 seconds, Engine 2 comes back to life. Because of the thrust imbalance, we have drifted to the left of the localizer. As we descended through 500 feet, the thrust output from Engine 2 finally is strong enough to pull us out of our fall. I go start Engine 1 now that we aren't falling. (While I'm aware you can start the 787 engines simultaneously, I decided to only start one in hopes it would give me thrust quicker than starting two at a time. Not sure if that's legit or not but I didn't have time to research).
Losing all power for a split second cost me all my approach data, and the ILS was no longer programmed on my PFD. I probably could have entered a holding pattern to re-enter that information properly, but at this point it was almost 1am and I just wanted to get this thing down and go to bed. So I circled back around and landed probably a bit overspeed, parked the airplane, kicked myself, and went to bed. I have since disabled that key command that cuts off both engines.

Flew an LHR-YUL-LHR (re-enacting the BA95/94 on the B77W) round trip on Infinite Flight Pro (casual server) that was quite, um, interesting.

I forgot to fill the tanks at LHR, meaning I had barely enough fuel for the LHR-YUL flight! As a result, I had to divert to Goose Bay and re-fuel. Because it was late, I had to overnight there and continue in the morning! Truly pathetic for what should only be a 5-hour flight.

The YUL-LHR flight was even crazier. Once again, I forgot the fuel, so I really had to fly slowly (240kts) and constantly modulate the throttles. This time, however, I decided to try to make it to LHR. I was really running low on fuel just before Ireland, so I decided to shut down the right engine, which gave me just enough fuel to make it to LHR. However, I totally ran empty on approach to LHR, meaning that I stalled almost immediately and crashed, with the threshold in sight!

And to think this could have all been avoided had I remembered the correct amount of fuel…

I'd had a lengthy break from online flying (VATSIM), but after buying the Thrustmaster Airbus yoke I started flying offline and doing some interesting handflown approaches. So after another brief pause, I decided to go online and do a flight from ATL to SXM since it looked like it would have ATC cover most of the way. Unfortunately, the bindings on the yoke had gone on the fritz, resulting in the X axis suddenly being assigned to the elevator trim - in reverse! One very flat takeoff later, and I was back to flying offline until I was certain the bindings were back to normal.

A few months ago I landed at TNCM in FSX Steam Edition (heavily tweaked and modified with hundreds of addons) iFly V.2 KLM 747-400 in the Caribbean landing mission and had the parking brake set. All tires blew out except for the two on the nose gear. I did not notice until Turing around on the runway to back track to the terminal that the aircraft was very slow to respond to throttle inputs and the aircraft moving. I switched to the outside view to see that the bottom half of the main gear wheels had been grinned away.

Haven't simmed in a couple of years (really want to get back into it, but don't have suitable hardware to do so).

My silliest has to be when I attempted a Captainsim 727 flight. I was so used to other Boeings where the wing tanks get filled first, then any additional fuel gets loaded into the centre tank. I somehow forgot that the 727 has three engines with No.2 being feed from the centre tank, so I would take off with fuel L and R wing tanks, and a small amount in the centre tank, I would then lose engine No.2 as the centre tank emptied, and it took me a couple of attempts before I realised what I had done. I felt so stupid.

Maybe not so stupid on my part, but FSX had a few errors in the navdata baked into the program. I found out the hard way that one of these errors was at VNKT (Kathmandu, Nepal) I was flying a DC-9 at night on the VOR RWY 02 approach. I was conducting the approach and I lost sight of the runway, I wasn't sure if my weather add on had spawned a cloud between me and the airport, or if it was a graphics glitch. The next minute I slammed into the hills to the south of the airport. After that I checked the in game map and discovered the KTM VOR had a frequency of 112.30 instead of 113.20 published on the approach plate. But I was getting a return on 113.20 in more or less the same direction as I was expecting the runway to be. I looked further and noticed they had a different VOR assigned 113.20 about 3-4 nmi short of the KTM VOR.

One time, I push button G to gear down somehow stupid glitch keyboard maybe double keyboard press G for gear went up, and almost landed no wheels I slapped G once before few seconds touchdown. I go God damned keyboard! I did G once. I don't know why! It made me so mad! LOL!

Q

Wow, that sounds like a major goof-up! I can imagine how you felt when you realized your mistake. But hey, at least you managed to fix it and land safely in Doha. That’s some impressive flying skills right there.

As for me, the dumbest mistake I ever made in a flight sim was when I was playing X-Plane 11 and I forgot to lower the landing gear before touching down. I was so focused on the runway that I ignored the warning alarms and the ATC yelling at me. Needless to say, I crashed and burned.

I learned my lesson the hard way: always check your instruments and follow the checklist. Flight sims can be fun, but they can also be challenging and unforgiving. That’s what makes them so realistic and immersive.

I have not played in years…but I do recall doing some serious damage to the island of St Thomas while attempting to land a TU-154.