Just long enough I found for it to come to a complete stop from a 150-140 knot touchdown with moderate auto-braking as I recall. I even cancelled the auto-braking at about 40 knots and rolled smoothly off the final runway turnoff, entering the turn at about 20 knots.

Luck of the draw I guess, but to the untrained observer, the cool, calculated act of a smooth professional. Clearly not me then 😀

Hello beautiful.

Thundering aloft, the quad Rolls Royce Trent 553’s of my Air Canada Airbus A340-500 shatter the relative tranquility of a mid morning lull at Manchester Airport.

Climbing out, I swing northwest for the trans-continental slog across the Atlantic, and across the sprawling plains, forests, mountains, lakes and rivers of northern Canada, to our final destination, Vancouver, British Columbia on Canada’s Pacific coast.

However, just after reaching 10,000 feet or so as the Airbus climbs to cruise altitude, the Captain remembers he’s forgotten a pub invite, and is forced to make a beer related diversion to nearby Liverpool John Lennon International.

The approach across the Mersey Estuary. Anyone mentions that bloody song with this particular river and a ferry in it, they die.

The landing. Not bad, nice and smooth, but a bit off the centre line. Really need to get my head around ILS approaches using the autopilot.

The rollout

So far, I only own 1 add-on for FSX given the short time since my upgrade, which is Just Flight’s A340-500/600 which to be honest, I’m not particularly happy with as it has a few issues. These include the MFD’s being blank in VC, but functioning in 2D Panel mode and no sound in the external views to name but two. Can’t say I’d recommend it.

Back to the point though, add on aircraft for FSX are a bit thin on the ground as it stands, although an absolute corker, Level-D’s awesome 767-300ER, was just recently patched for FSX compatibility. A few others like PMDG’s 737 NGX and 747X are also on the way too. But what I’d like to see are some decent 777 and A330 packages for FSX, but I’m not aware of any in the pipeline as it stands.

Having just received my shiny new copy of FS-X Deluxe Edition this morning, I excitedly took to the skies over Vancouver in the default Airbus A321.

Although I must confess, my 1st landing was so hard that a few of the passengers in the back probably bit the tips of their tongues off! 😮

None the less, the graphics are amazing when cranked up, and my Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 & XFX 8800 GTS XT combo seems to cope well. I’m sure I’ll be producing many more shots of my ropey airmanship for all to see over the coming months. :p

Cheers, Mike 🙂

The XWB thing refers to the revamped A350 family Airbus are launching to counter the 787 mate.

As a frequent Delta flyer ( I wouldn’t say I’m a fanboi or anything, just their quotes have always been cheapest) I can honestly say we’ve never really had any problems, aside from a 3 hour delay that stemmed from an MD-11 going down with a technical fault on us for the return Atlanta-Manchester leg back in 1999.

I’m pretty confident, that because they can cope with their operations at Atlanta-Hartsfield and New York JFK, then I’m sure they’re upto the challenge of operating through Heathrow too.

Performing mundane touch & goes at Seattle-Tacoma with my Project Opensky A340-300 in Virgin Atlantic colours, I decided to poke a little fun at Boeing by demonstrating the A340’s shortfield performance, by taking off from their very own diminutive Runway 31R. As you can see, I did it, but only just. With the outer tanks empty, and centre 1 & 2 at 35% capacity, I rotated and became airborne with literally a few feet to spare!

So I guess with Delta’s exclusivity deal with Boeing, an order for them was going to be a dead cert anyway since it’ll fit nicely into the fleet, replacing the remaining 767-300’s & 767-300ER’s.

Have Delta finally retired their last 767-200’s yet?