Airliner Pilot Review

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Review by FSTV ( www.fstv.us )


[img:ef0acf6c1d]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v314/fstv/airlinerpilot/box.gif[/img:ef0acf6c1d]


[b:ef0acf6c1d]Publisher:[/b:ef0acf6c1d] Just Flight
(www.justflight.com)
[b:ef0acf6c1d]Product Name:[/b:ef0acf6c1d] Airliner Pilot
[b:ef0acf6c1d]Price:[/b:ef0acf6c1d] £ 29.99 / € 44.95 / $ 44.99
[b:ef0acf6c1d]Availability:[/b:ef0acf6c1d] In stock
[b:ef0acf6c1d]Download Version also available [/b:ef0acf6c1d]

[b:ef0acf6c1d]What is Airliner Pilot?[/b:ef0acf6c1d]
In a nutshell Airliner Pilot is an add-on to Flightsim 2004 that adds
the dimension similar to a virtual airline to your FS2004 experience.
Once installed Airliner Pilot allows you to “Fly A Career” with an
airline of your choice. (You even have the ability to add your own
brand name to your livery of choice)

[b:ef0acf6c1d]My Impressions[/b:ef0acf6c1d]
After reading the write-ups on this product I was quite excited and
could not wait to install it on my system and give it a whirl! I have
always liked the idea of using FS2004 in a career mode type
application – It gives me places to fly and weather conditions to try
out in that I normally would not setup on my own system.

Thanks to Just Flight my copy arrived in the mail last week! – as with
all Just Flight products installation is a snap (You will need a
DVD-ROM though as this version does NOT come out in CD format)
needless to say within a couple of min’s I was up and running looking
at the main Airliner Pilot window.

[b:ef0acf6c1d]Interface[/b:ef0acf6c1d]
Once installed on your hard drive Airliner Pilot is pretty straight
forward to run. Everything happens from the main menu system. The
first thing I setup was “myself” as a new pilot! Within the new pilot
setup options you have the ability to stipulate how you intend to use
Airliner pilot. Your options include the following

• Pilots name
• Hire Date (The system puts this in automatically for you)
• Current rank – Each new pilot starts off as a Junior First Officer
as you progress through the game you can be promoted to the following
“ranks” Junior First Officer, First Officer, Senior First Officer,
Captain, Training Captain and finally off course Captain!
• Base of operation

[b:ef0acf6c1d]On to the Flying[/b:ef0acf6c1d]
This is where I started to notice that the product lacks a level of
sophistication and integration into FS2004 that I thought it would
have. Let me explain. With Airliner Pilot you start off your career
in a Dash 8 300 (Courtesy of PSS) While the flight model of the Dash
8 is excellent the fact that you fly in the first officers seat not
the captains seat leads me to believe that for some reason the Dash
8’s right hand panel was never designed for first officer flying. A
lot of the buttons that work on the original PSS Dash 8 simply do not
respond to input. Nevertheless that did not bother me too much as this
was all about getting points and flying around the country!

Before you start up your engines you need to turn on the Route Tracker
– this gauge then loads up your flight plan which was generated at the
main screen. It is the main interface to Airliner Pilot. Once this is
turned on it will show you you’re off block time and waypoints on
route.

As a user of FSNAV I really wanted to import the Airliner Pilot flight
plan into FSNAV – while there are arguments that say using FSNAV to
fly Airliner Pilot defeats the object of the game – I have to
disagree! Most regional Airlines use some form of Auto Pilot during
the cruising phase of the flight, besides as an arm chair pilot – I
would like the luxury of enabling the autopilot while I check to
see what my flight looks like from different angles – enjoy the
scenery and or perhaps run to the kitchen to get a quick drink! I
really do not want to labor the point here but it would have been a
nice feature to have an Airliner Pilot to FSNAV flight plan export
facility. I got around this problem by manually inserting all the
waypoints into FSNAV directly, this way I managed to accomplish what
I wanted. Just out of interest and while I’m talking about flight
plan export and import, on www.airlinerpilot.com in the file section
under OTHER there is a FSNAV to Airliner Pilot flight plan conversion
tool! – Thanks Wolfgang for putting it up there for us!

Another area of Airliner Pilot that irked me a little was it’s
integration to ATC – Well to be honest with you it is almost non
existent. While Airliner Pilot asks you to fly to a certain waypoint,
ATC has a mind of it’s own and tells you to follow a separate route.
The upside to this is two fold! 1: Always listen to ATC – and
Airliner Pilot will not deduct points from your flight path if you do
not fly to each and every waypoint! 2: Actually ATC does bug me quite
a bit in FS2004 – It is about as intuitive as those terrible
answering machines that one gets through to when phoning any large
corporation in the U.S.A. Although Microsoft have improved it’s ATC
interface somewhat since FS2000 i.e you can now request different
altitudes and different runways, It still suffers from quirks that
irk me no end…. The solution! – Turn off ATC and enjoy a more relaxed
non confrontational flight!

At the time of writing this review I have completed four flights with
Airliner Pilot – yet I have only been credited with one! Here is
why!

1: My first flight (I thought went really well) Airliner Pilot
deducted 5 points from me because my flight performance was not
right! – Okay so be it!
2: On my second flight the surface winds were so strong the poor Dash
8 could not even make a right turn onto the taxi way, clipped a
building and therefore nullified all the points I had accumulated on
my first flight!
3: I thought that my third flight was great! – Well that was until I
landed at KATL! Boy was I in for a surprise. When I got my debriefing
from Airliner Pilot it told me that I had descended to fast and that
my plane had broken up! – Now I do not believe I did this as I have
my setting set to REAL with aircraft stress turned on! – I could not
argue with the program so decided to try my flight again!
4: My fourth flight went just great – this time I watched everything
real close, made sure that I did not overstress anything, except my
mind thinking about what not to overstress! – It worked – I had a
good landing and only had a couple of points deducted for taking way
too long to do the flight (Flight time should have been 1hr 26min’s I
did it in 2hrs 32 min’s – See I told you I was taking my time!

[b:ef0acf6c1d]Conclusions[/b:ef0acf6c1d]
While bearing in mind some integration issues that I believe would
have taken this product to a new level both for novice and advanced
simmers alike, this is still a superb product! There is something to
be said about having an add-on for FS2004 that gives it a virtual
airline dimension without the hassle of signing up for a virtual
airline.

[i:ef0acf6c1d][b:ef0acf6c1d]- FSTV: A superb
Product for the true armchair
pilot![/b:ef0acf6c1d][/i:ef0acf6c1d]




[b:ef0acf6c1d][color=darkblue:ef0acf6c1d]Publishers
Description[/color:ef0acf6c1d][/b:ef0acf6c1d]
The popularity of virtual airlines demonstrates that many flight
simulation enthusiasts want to enjoy the whole commercial aircraft
experience - not just piloting a plane from A to B. Up to now
developers have concentrated on producing ever more detailed
airliners, scenery and airport traffic, but there's been nothing to
replicate airline operations, apart from management games like
Airline Tycoon, which lack the flying element.

Airliner Pilot is a unique expansion for FS2004 that fills this gap.
You begin your Airliner Pilot career at the heart of a fictional
airline and start as a Junior First Officer in the right-hand seat of
a turboprop aircraft. Flying your way through the program you work
your way through a pilot's career. The airline will assign routes to
fly according to rank and aircraft allowances, and, if successful,
you finally achieve the coveted left seat.