Don't Try Landing A 747 When Under The Influence

FSX: 747 ILS Crosswind Landing Under Influence of Alcohol.

5 Mistakes Flight Simmers Make

DISCLAIMER: The following tips apply to Microsoft Flight Simulator, not real life. If you are a real life pilot feel free to correct any mistakes!

1. Extending spoilers on a jet before touchdown. If this is done too close to the ground, it often results in the plane crashing because of a too high descent rate, if realism settings are on hard.

2. Landing on all 3 wheels.

3. Trying to flare the 747 too much on landing. The 747 can be put on the ground with a fairly flat attitude. Simmers flying the Cessna 172 and moving onto something like the 747 often have the tendency to flare too much. Three degrees nose-up on landing is often sufficient. This applies to other jets but is very noticeable in the 747. Remember that the whole point of flaring a plane is to reduce the rate of descent. Don't flare just for the sake of it. If in doubt check your VSI and see what the rate of descent is.

4. Over correcting for crosswind landing. Planes will tend to point their noses into the direction of the wind anyway.

5. Using the Approach Hold as Autoland. The approach hold is not supposed to autoland the plane. It crashes your plane directly into the ground. You need to disconnect it before landing.

FSX Boeing 747 KLAX Stormy Weather Landing

Me attempting to land a Qantas Boeing 747 at KLAX in Flight Simulator X in stormy weather. The 747 sure is difficult to handle, and it's been likened to a cruise ship. But I have a feeling that manually landing a 747 is a lot harder than docking a cruise ship!

Watch as I battle rain and wind in an attempt to get this beast down on the ground :-)



EDIT: It appears that the video quality is so poor you can't see the rain and the wetness of the runway. Next time I'll try to create a higher quality video. The problem is that my Internet connection is slow so I have to make the files smaller in order to get it uploaded faster