Pilot Journey manual

Everything the app can be asked about: linking the simulator, taking work, flying a leg, and the career the flights add up to. Each chapter ends with the questions people actually arrive with.

Contents

• Start here
  • 01. What this is The loop, the two career paths, and every page in the app.
  • 02. Connecting to MSFS What the link does, the same-PC setup, and reading its status.
  • 03. The Bridge Flying on a Mac or a second PC: install, connect, diagnose.
  • 04. Your first flight A new career to a logged flight, start to finish.
• Getting work
  • 05. The charter board Where contracts come from, refreshing, deadlines, and filters.
  • 06. Flying your own aircraft The board that pays for owning metal, and what it costs to use.
  • 07. Airlines Applying, signing, being paid, and what leaving costs.
  • 08. The rotation Schedule blocks, skipping, regenerating, and custom routes.
• Flying
  • 09. Briefing and dispatch SimBrief, the flight plan, and what you lose without one.
  • 10. The live flight The page you fly from, the map, and starting the clock.
  • 11. Completion Ending a flight, release and cancel, and the Operations Center.
  • 12. Scoring Landing, on-time, discipline, and what the score changes.
• Your career
  • 13. Miles and ranks The level curve, what earns miles, and the two rank ladders.
  • 14. Type ratings The ladder, what a rating covers, and how to pay less for one.
  • 15. Standing What moves it, what it gates, and how to recover it.
  • 16. Money and fleet The ledger, buying and selling aircraft, and your MSFS hangar.
• Living with the app
  • 17. Inbox and news Mail that carries a decision, and what ignoring it costs.
  • 18. Settings and backups Every setting, career backup and restore, and updates.
  • 19. Troubleshooting Symptoms, where to look, and what is not actually broken.

Start here

01. What this is

The loop, the two career paths, and every page in the app.

What Pilot Journey is

A career layer around Microsoft Flight Simulator. You take on work, fly it yourself in the sim, and the app watches how it went: how you put the aircraft down, whether you arrived when you said you would, and how disciplined the flight was. That reading feeds your standing, your rank, and the work that comes your way next.

The app reads from the simulator and never writes to it. It does not move a control, load an aircraft, file a plan, or fly a single leg for you. If the sim is not running, the contracts, training, and finance side still works; you simply cannot start a flight.

The loop

1. Find work. Charter for one-off jobs, or Airline schedule for the next leg of a rotation you have been rostered.

2. Accept it. The job becomes your Live Flight: one briefing, one route, one aircraft.

3. Dispatch it. Open SimBrief, generate the plan, pull it back in. Optional, but without it there is no schedule to be judged against.

4. Fly it in the sim. Position at the departure field, press Start, and the app records the leg as you go.

5. Park it. Press End, and the payout, the miles, the score and the logbook entry all land at once.

One flight at a time

There is a single active flight. Accepting anything while one is open is refused, so the way out of a job you no longer want is to release it (before you start) or cancel it (after). Both are covered in Completion.

Two ways to start a career

Chosen once, during setup, and never changed afterwards. Everything else about your pilot can be edited later; this cannot.

From zero, level 1

A fresh licence and cash in the bank. You fly light aircraft on the charter board, build a record, buy your way up the rating ladder, and apply to an airline when you qualify. The long version of the story.

Airline, level 12

Type-rated on a jet already, with the training debt that paid for it sitting on your balance. You can apply to carriers on day one and repay the debt from the line.

Every page, and what it is for

• Dashboard your next leg, your balance, the weather where you are, and how far the next rank is.

• Inbox mail addressed to you. Some of it carries a decision that exists nowhere else in the app.

• News the industry paper. Read-only, but it is where recruiting and trouble at your employer show up first.

• Airline schedule the block of legs you have been rostered, in order.

• Charter the job board. Two tabs: jobs flown in the operator’s aircraft, and jobs flown in your own.

• Live Flight the flight you have open: briefing, route map, weather, dispatch, and the start and end controls.

• Operations Center a dispatcher reading over your shoulder. It raises what looks wrong about the flight you are about to fly.

• Logbook every completed leg, with the full track, the profile charts, and the score breakdown.

• Contracts the hiring board. Who is recruiting, what they want, and whether you clear it.

• Training the rating ladder. What you hold, what it costs to hold more.

• Fleet your own aircraft, the showroom, and the used market.

• Finance the ledger. Every credit and every charge, with nothing netted off.

• Airports, Airlines, Aircraft reference. Runways and frequencies, who flies what, and the type encyclopaedia.

Two pages are not in the list. Career opens from the pilot card at the bottom of the sidebar rather than a nav row, and Debug only exists in development and tester builds.

Getting around quickly

• Cmd/Ctrl + K opens the command palette, which also searches airports, airlines and aircraft types by name.

• ? opens the palette too, when you are not typing in a field.

• Press g then a letter to jump: g d dashboard, g v live flight, g l logbook, g c career, g t training, g m finance.

• The circled ? in a page header runs a short tour of that page.

Common questions

What does the app do while I fly, and what does it never do?

It reads. About ten times a second it takes a snapshot of where you are, how fast, how high, what the engines are doing, and whether any warning is sounding. From that it draws your track, grades your landing, times your arrival and watches your handling.

It never writes back. No control is moved, no aircraft is loaded, no plan is filed, and nothing is done to the simulator on your behalf. If you want the flight plan in your aircraft, you load it there yourself.

Can I have more than one job on the go?

No. There is one active flight, and every board refuses to accept anything while one is open, naming the callsign you already have.

To get rid of it: release it if you have not started (free), or cancel it if you have (it costs). Both are in Completion.

Where is the Career page? It is not in the sidebar.

It opens from the pilot card at the very bottom of the sidebar, the one with your name and rank on it. There is no nav row for it.

Two other ways in: press g then c, or open the command palette with Cmd/Ctrl + K and type career.

Is there a faster way around than clicking the sidebar?

Cmd/Ctrl + K opens the command palette from anywhere, including while you are typing in a field. It lists every page and also searches airports, airlines and aircraft types, so it doubles as a lookup. ? opens it too when your cursor is not in a field.

For places you go constantly, press g and then a letter within a second and a half:

• g d dashboard, g v live flight, g l logbook

• g f schedule, g o contracts, g t training

• g c career, g m finance, g x fleet

The Inbox, News and Operations Center badges never seem to agree. What is each counting?

Three different things, which is why they move independently.

• Inbox counts unread mail addressed to you.

• News counts unread articles. Opening the News page clears all of them at once, because it is a paper and you read the paper.

• Operations Center counts items still waiting on a decision from you, not items you have not looked at. Acknowledging one clears it.

A guide mentioned a Debug page and I do not have one.

It only exists in development and tester builds. A normal release does not include it, and if a saved page happened to point there the app quietly returns you to the Dashboard. Nothing behind it is needed to play.

02. Connecting to MSFS

What the link does, the same-PC setup, and reading its status.

What the connection does

Scoring needs to watch the aircraft. Position and altitude draw the track, the touchdown reading grades the landing, the warning flags feed the discipline score, and the fuel reading gives you the burn. All of it arrives about ten times a second while the sim is running.

No SDK, no add-on, no DLL, and no file to edit. Pilot Journey speaks the simulator’s own protocol directly. Both MSFS 2020 and MSFS 2024 work, with the same setup.

Which of the two setups you need

SimConnect

The simulator and Pilot Journey on the same Windows PC. Nothing to configure: start MSFS, start Pilot Journey, done.

Bridge

The simulator on a Windows PC and Pilot Journey somewhere else, either a Mac or a second PC. A small companion app runs next to the sim and passes the data across your network. See the next chapter.

The choice lives in Settings → Simulator → How to connect. On a Mac there is no choice to make, so the switch is replaced by a download button for the bridge.

Same PC, start to finish

1. Start Microsoft Flight Simulator and load a flight.

2. Open Settings → Simulator and leave How to connect on SimConnect.

3. Check the status card at the top of that panel. It should read connected. If it does not, press its reconnect button.

Advanced network setup on this panel stays closed for a same-PC setup. Its summary reads This PC, and that is correct.

Connected is not the same as receiving

The link comes up as soon as the simulator answers, which happens while you are still in the menus. Frames only start counting once an aircraft actually exists in the world, so a connected badge with no numbers behind it is normal on the main menu, during a loading screen, and in the world map.

Frames from an aircraft sitting at exactly zero latitude and longitude, or with no aircraft name, are discarded rather than recorded. That is what stops a loading screen from drawing a track line to the middle of the Atlantic. Load a flight and the numbers appear.

Reading the status

• The pill in the title bar is the quick read. Hover it and you get the status, which transport is in use, any note, and how long ago the last frame arrived. That last line is the most useful diagnostic in the app: if it keeps climbing, data has stopped.

• The status card in Settings → Simulator gives the same thing in full sentences, plus a reconnect button.

• A Paused tag appears when the simulator is paused. Nothing accumulates while paused: no track, no warning seconds, no discipline findings.

Flying with no link at all

Everything except flying works. You can browse boards, buy ratings and aircraft, read mail, and study the encyclopaedia. What you cannot do is start a flight: the start control needs live telemetry, because a flight nobody watched cannot be scored.

Common questions

Do I need the bridge, or can I just run the app?

If Microsoft Flight Simulator and Pilot Journey are on the same Windows PC, you need nothing at all. Start both and they find each other.

You need the bridge if Pilot Journey runs on a Mac, or on a different PC to the simulator. It runs on the machine with the simulator, not the machine with the app.

Do I need the MSFS SDK, an add-on, or to edit a config file?

No. Pilot Journey speaks the simulator’s protocol directly. Nothing is installed into the simulator, no folder is touched, and there is no file to edit.

Does this work with MSFS 2020, or only 2024?

Both, with identical setup. The same protocol covers them.

One thing differs, and it is not the connection: scanning your Community folder for installed aircraft finds less on 2024, because 2024 streams the stock fleet and anything bought in the marketplace rather than storing it as files.

It says connected but there are no numbers anywhere.

Connected means the simulator answered. That happens while you are still in the menus, before any aircraft exists.

Frames only start counting when there is a real aircraft in a real place. Anything sitting at zero latitude and zero longitude, or with no aircraft name, is thrown away rather than recorded, which is what stops a loading screen from drawing a track into the Atlantic.

Load a flight and the numbers appear. If they do not, hover the status pill in the title bar: the last line tells you how long ago the last frame arrived.

Can I use the app when the simulator is not running?

Everything except flying works.

• Browse and accept work, buy ratings and aircraft, read mail and news.

• Review your logbook, replay old flights, study the encyclopaedia.

• What you cannot do is press Start on a flight.

The start control needs live telemetry, with no offline path, because a flight nobody watched cannot be graded and the app would rather refuse than record an ungradeable one.

03. The Bridge

Flying on a Mac or a second PC: install, connect, diagnose.

What the bridge is

A small companion program that runs on the Windows PC with the simulator. It reads the simulator locally and hands the data to Pilot Journey over your home network. It has no window of its own most of the time, it sits in the system tray and gets on with it.

You need it if Pilot Journey runs on a Mac, or on a different PC to the simulator. If both are on the same Windows PC, you do not need it at all.

Installing it

1. On the Windows PC with the simulator, download it from pilotjourney.app/bridge. On a Mac, Settings → Simulator → Get the bridge opens the same page so you can send yourself the link.

2. Run the installer. It asks for administrator rights, and that is on purpose: it uses them to register the network permissions up front so Windows does not interrupt you with a firewall prompt later.

3. It starts the bridge for you and opens its window once, so you can see it worked. Close that window whenever you like. The bridge stays in the tray.

4. On the machine running Pilot Journey, open Settings → Simulator, set How to connect to Bridge (already done for you on a Mac), and pick your bridge from Available bridges.

Windows may show “Windows protected your PC”. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

Finding it from the app

The bridge announces itself on your network and normally appears in the list on its own within a few seconds. Rescan forces another look.

If nothing appears, the announcement is being blocked. This is common: guest networks isolate devices from each other by design, and some routers drop these announcements outright. Typing the address by hand always works and is not a worse setup, just a less convenient one.

1. On the sim PC, open the bridge from the tray and choose Open dashboard.

2. It shows one address under Bridge address, with a Copy button. The tray menu offers the same thing under Copy address.

3. In Pilot Journey, open Settings → Simulator → Advanced network setup and paste it into Bridge address. There is nothing else to fill in.

A sim PC usually has more than one network address, and only one of them is the right one. Addresses belonging to virtual adapters (WSL, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, VMware, a VPN) look perfectly plausible and will never work. The bridge already knows about this: it sorts those to the back and offers you the one most likely to be real. Use the address it offers rather than one you found elsewhere in Windows.

Reading the bridge window

The three tiles at the bottom show live altitude, ground speed and heading. If those are moving, the sim side of the link is definitively working, and any remaining problem is between the bridge and the app.

Which half is broken

The link has two halves and they fail differently. Work out which one you are looking at before changing anything.

Losing the link mid-flight

Nothing is cancelled and nothing is lost. The flight stays open, everything flown so far is saved, and the link comes back on its own. What is not recorded is the gap itself: no track, no warning time, no discipline findings while it is down.

Reconnection backs off gradually, waiting one second, then two, five, ten, and finally thirty between attempts, so a sim PC that is rebooting is not hammered. A silent connection that has actually died is detected within about twenty seconds. Waking a laptop from sleep forces an immediate reconnect rather than waiting out the timer.

Keeping it running

• Start with Windows is a checkbox on the bridge dashboard, off by default. On the machine that runs your simulator, it is usually worth turning on.

• It updates itself, checking every few hours against its own release feed. A downloaded update only installs once no app has been connected for a couple of minutes, so it can never restart out from under a flight. The update action in the tray overrides that wait if you want it now.

• Nothing in the tray? Windows hides tray icons behind the small arrow. Check there before concluding it did not start.

Version mismatches

The bridge and the app are separate programs on separate update schedules, so one can get ahead of the other. When they cannot agree on how to talk, the app stops rather than guessing at the data, and it tells you which of the two to update. If the bridge is the stale one, leaving it running for a minute usually fixes it by itself, since it updates without being asked.

Where the logs are

The bridge writes bridge.log next to its own settings, with a second file for update activity. Every line is tagged by area, so a search for the tag narrows a long file quickly. On startup it lists every network address it can see, along with which adapter each one belongs to, which is the fastest way to settle an argument about the right address.

Common questions

On a Mac plus Windows setup, what do I install where?

1. On the Windows PC with the simulator: the bridge. That machine, not the Mac.

2. On the Mac: Pilot Journey itself. It is already set to use the bridge; there is no switch to find.

3. On the Mac: open Settings → Simulator and pick your bridge from the list, or paste its address if it has not appeared.

Why does the bridge installer want administrator rights?

To register the network permissions at install time. Without them, Windows would interrupt you with a firewall prompt the first time the bridge tried to accept a connection, usually at the least convenient moment. Doing it during install means the prompt never appears. If you do see one later, that step did not take effect, and allowing it on private networks fixes it.

The app finds no bridges at all.

The bridge announces itself over the network, and that announcement is easy for a network to block. It is not a sign anything is broken.

• Press Rescan once, in case it was simply still starting.

• Check both machines are on the same network. Guest networks isolate devices from each other by design, and a router advertising two names for the same connection can put you on different segments.

• Turn off any VPN on either machine.

Then stop trying to fix discovery and type the address instead. Open the bridge on the sim PC, choose Open dashboard, copy the address it shows, and paste it into Settings → Simulator → Advanced network setup. A typed address works exactly as well as a discovered one.

My sim PC has several addresses. Which one is right?

Use the one the bridge offers you, not one you found in Windows. This is the single most common reason a correct-looking setup does not connect.

A PC running a simulator usually also has addresses belonging to virtual adapters: WSL, Hyper-V, VirtualBox, VMware, a VPN, remote-desktop tools. They look exactly as plausible as the real one and will never work.

The bridge already knows the difference. It sorts those to the back and offers the address most likely to be genuinely reachable, which is the one on its dashboard and the first in its tray menu.

It shows up in the list but connecting does nothing.

Discovery and the connection itself travel differently, so one can work while the other is blocked. This is almost always the firewall.

1. On the sim PC, open Windows Defender Firewall, then allow an app through it, find Pilot Journey Bridge, and make sure it is ticked for Private networks.

2. Press Restart server on the bridge dashboard so it re-opens its connection under the new rule.

3. Try again from the app.

The bridge says it is live but the app sees nothing.

The bridge saying it is live only means it can read the simulator. It says nothing about whether the app can reach the bridge.

Look at the connected apps list on the bridge dashboard. If it is empty, the problem is between the two machines: firewall, wrong address, or different networks. If it lists a client but your app disagrees, you are looking at a different machine or a second copy than you think.

It says it is waiting for MSFS. What do I press?

Nothing. That message means the bridge is running and the app is talking to it perfectly, and the simulator is simply not up yet. It is amber rather than red for exactly that reason. Start the simulator and load a flight; the bridge keeps trying by itself and picks it up within a few seconds.

It says the bridge, or the app, is out of date.

The two are separate programs that update on separate schedules, so one can get ahead. When they can no longer agree on how to talk, the app stops rather than guessing at the data, because misread telemetry would quietly produce wrong scores.

The message names which of the two to update. If it is the bridge, leaving it running for a minute usually fixes it on its own, since it updates without being asked.

The link dropped in the cruise. Have I lost the flight?

No. Nothing is cancelled. The flight stays open, everything flown so far is saved, and the link comes back on its own.

What is not recorded is the gap: no track, no warning time, no discipline findings while it is down. Ending the flight is blocked until telemetry returns, because the app cannot confirm where you are.

Reconnection backs off gradually, up to about half a minute between attempts, so a rare drop reconnects instantly and a rebooting sim PC is not hammered.

I closed my laptop, and afterwards it looked connected but nothing updated.

A connection interrupted by sleep can look alive from both ends for a long time. The bridge link is checked with a regular heartbeat, so a dead one is spotted within about twenty seconds and rebuilt. Waking the machine also forces an immediate reconnect rather than waiting for that check. If a stale link ever does persist, the reconnect button on the Settings status card rebuilds it at once.

What port does the bridge use, and can I change it?

It uses a fixed port, and no, it cannot be changed. That is why neither program shows you the number or asks for it: it would be a value you could only ever get wrong.

If a firewall rule needs the port, the installer already registered it. The one case where it matters is another program holding the port, which the bridge reports as not accepting connections.

The bridge says it is not accepting connections.

It could not open its network connection, and almost always that is a second copy of the bridge already running and holding it.

• Check the hidden tray icons behind the small arrow for a bridge already there.

• Press Restart server on the dashboard. This is also the right button after adding a firewall rule.

• If it persists, quit the bridge from its tray menu and start it once.

Should I turn on Start with Windows?

On the machine that runs your simulator, generally yes. The bridge is a tray utility that does nothing until an app connects, and having to remember to start it is the most common reason a working setup appears broken one evening. It is off by default because starting things without being asked should be a choice.

How does the bridge update, and can it restart during my flight?

It checks its own release feed every few hours and downloads in the background. It cannot see whether you are flying, but it can see whether any app is connected, so a downloaded update only installs once nothing has been connected for a couple of minutes.

In practice it updates between sessions and never mid-flight. If you want it immediately, the update action in the tray menu overrides the wait.

Where are the logs if I need to report a problem?

The bridge keeps a log file next to its own settings, plus a second one for update activity that survives the restart an update causes. Every line is tagged by area, so searching for the tag narrows a long file quickly.

The most useful part is the very start: on launch it lists every network address it can see, with the adapter each belongs to. That settles most arguments about which address to use.

From the app side, hover the status pill in the title bar. It reports the transport in use and how long ago the last frame arrived.

I installed the bridge and there is nothing in the system tray.

Windows hides most tray icons behind the small arrow at the left of the clock. Look there first, and drag the icon out if you want it permanently visible. If it is genuinely absent, the bridge is not running: start it from the Start menu, and turn on Start with Windows on its dashboard so it is there next time.

Windows says it protected my PC and will not run the installer.

Choose More info, then Run anyway. That warning appears because the installer is not signed with a certificate yet, not because anything was found in the file. Windows shows it for every unsigned installer regardless of content.

04. Your first flight

A new career to a logged flight, start to finish.

Before you start

Have the simulator installed and, if it runs on a different machine to Pilot Journey, the bridge set up first. A free SimBrief account is worth having too, though you can add it later.

1. Building your pilot

The setup wizard runs once. Most of what it asks can be changed later in Settings; two things cannot.

• Name, photo, callsign, nationality. Everything here is editable later except the callsign.

• Your hangar. Tick the aircraft you actually own in the simulator. This never gates anything, it filters: boards and the training list can then show you what you can genuinely load. Presets cover the stock fleets.

• Career path. Permanent, and the one real decision in the wizard.

• Home base. Where you start and where charter crews come from. Editable later.

The hangar step comes before the career path on purpose. If you pick the airline path, the wizard offers you a rating in each tier below your starting jet, and it defaults those to aircraft you have said you own, so the work you are offered is work you can fly.

2. Which path

• From zero starts you at level 1 with $25,000 and a light-aircraft licence. You fly the charter board, save up, and climb the rating ladder yourself.

• Airline starts you at level 12 with a jet rating and a balance of -$50,000, which is the training that bought the rating. Carriers will talk to you immediately.

Neither is harder. The airline path skips the light-aircraft chapter of a career and starts you in debt instead; a handful of jet legs clears it.

3. Finding your first job

From zero: open Charter. The board is full of jobs already. Use From here so you are not asked to fly from an airport on another continent, pick something an hour or two long, and open it.

Airline: open Contracts, find a carrier marked open to you, and apply. The reply arrives as mail. Sign it, and a block of legs is built for you under Airline schedule. Your first leg is the top one.

4. Accepting it

If you are not standing at the departure airport, accepting a charter offers to move you there and charges for it. Airline rotations position you free.

Once accepted, the job is your Live Flight. The charter contract leaves the board at that moment.

5. Dispatch

1. Put your SimBrief ID into Settings → Pilot profile once.

2. On Live Flight, press Open SimBrief. It opens in your browser with the route, aircraft and passenger count already filled in. Generate the plan there.

3. Come back and press Fetch OFP. Times, fuel, cruise level and the filed route all appear, and the map redraws along the real routing.

You can skip all of this. What you give up is the on-time half of the score, because without a plan there is no arrival time to be judged against. The flight still pays and still counts.

6. Flying it

Load the aircraft at the departure airport in the simulator. When you are within three miles of it and the app can see you, Start flight lights up. Press it and fly the leg. You can leave the app on any page; recording does not depend on watching it.

7. Ending it

Taxi in, stop, and press End flight. It needs you within three miles of the arrival airport and under five knots. The payout, the miles, the score and the logbook entry all land together, and you are moved to the arrival airport ready for the next job.

If you would rather it happened by itself, turn on Auto-complete on parking in Settings → Simulator. Both automation settings are off until you ask for them.

What to do next

• Read the debrief. The score breakdown says exactly where points went.

• Check your Inbox. Early mail includes work offers that never appear on any board.

• Fly a few more legs before spending anything. Ratings are the main expense of a career and the right first one depends on whether you are employed.

Common questions

Which career path should I pick, and what does the airline one really cost?

Neither is harder, and neither is the intended one. They start you at different points in the same story.

• From zero puts you at level 1 with $25,000 and a light-aircraft licence. You fly small charter work, save, and buy your way up the rating ladder. Pick this if the climb is the part you want.

• Airline puts you at level 12 already rated on a jet, with a balance of -$50,000. That is the training that bought the rating. Pick this if you want to be flying an airliner this evening.

The debt charges no interest and nothing bad happens while it stands. A handful of jet legs clears it. What the airline path really costs you is the light-aircraft chapter of a career, which you cannot go back and play later.

This choice is permanent. Everything else in the wizard can be changed afterwards.

What do the logbook history picks in the wizard actually do?

They fill in the career you are supposed to have already had. Starting at level twelve on a jet with no light-aircraft ratings would leave you unable to apply anywhere, because carriers ask for the ladder below the aircraft they fly. So you are granted one rating in each class below your starting jet.

The choice matters for what you can actually fly. Each of those ratings puts contracts on your charter board, so picking a type you own in the simulator gives you flyable work, while picking one you do not own fills the board with jobs you cannot load.

This is why the hangar step comes first: types you have ticked are marked, and the defaults prefer them.

Which of my setup choices can I change later?

Most of them. Two are fixed for the life of the career.

• Permanent: your career path, and your callsign.

• Editable in Settings → Pilot profile: name, nationality, photo, and home base.

• Editable any time: your MSFS hangar, in Settings.

Your airline hub is a separate thing from your home base and is changed from your career contract. Changing it relocates you and re-anchors future rosters.

What is the shortest route from a new career to a scored flight?

Finish the wizard, then: open Charter, turn on From here, pick something an hour long, accept it. Load that aircraft at that airport in the simulator. Press Start flight, fly it, park, press End flight.

Two places new players stall. The start button needs you within three miles of the departure airport with the simulator connected, so load at the right airport. And the board can offer aircraft you do not own in the simulator, so turn on In my sim if you filled in your hangar.

Dispatch is worth doing but it is not required for a first flight.

Start flight is greyed out.

Three things can block it, and the button says which one.

• Sim not connected. The simulator is not running, or the bridge is down.

• Waiting for sim. Connected, but no frame has arrived. You are in a menu or a loading screen; load a flight.

• Not at the airport. You are more than three miles from the departure field, and it tells you how far. Reposition in the simulator.

There is no way to start a flight offline. Scoring is a reading taken from the simulator, so a flight it cannot see is a flight it cannot grade.

Getting work

05. The charter board

Where contracts come from, refreshing, deadlines, and filters.

What the board is

One-off jobs from operators who already have the aircraft. You supply the pilot, they supply the metal, and they pay a flat rate for the distance. No employer, no commitment, and the only requirement is that you hold the rating.

The Operator tab is this chapter. The Own aircraft tab is a different economy and has its own chapter next.

Where the contracts come from

The board is generated against the ratings you hold, one batch per aircraft variant you are rated on, 10 to 20 contracts each. That is why a pilot with a single light-aircraft class rating and a pilot with four jet type ratings see boards of wildly different sizes. The cap is 2,000 contracts.

Because the board is generated and then stored, buying a new rating does not add contracts to the board you are looking at. Press Refresh and the next batch includes your new type.

Refreshing

Refresh is manual and it adds: the new batch is appended and the oldest unpinned contracts fall off the bottom to stay under the cap. Expired rows are swept away at the same time.

The board shows a countdown to an automatic refresh. It is a guide to how stale the batch is, not a timer that fires. Nothing regenerates on its own except an empty board, which re-seeds itself the moment you open it.

Pinning protects a contract from being pushed off by a refresh. It does not protect it from its own deadline.

What the routes look like

Endpoints are drawn from airline-served airports only, so you are not sent to a farm strip. Beyond that, three rules shape what you see.

• Range matters both ways. Each category has a usable slice of its range, so a long-range widebody is never offered a thirty-minute hop. If your board is all long haul, that is the aircraft, not the board.

• Short trips dominate. The mix leans heavily to short sectors, with progressively fewer medium and long ones.

• Major hubs are earned. Below level 6 the large international airports are kept out of the destination pool. Departures are never restricted, so you can always fly home from one.

The level gate is applied when the batch is generated, not when you read it. Reaching level 6 does not repopulate a board you already have. Refresh it.

Working from where you are

About 30% of each batch is forced to depart from wherever you currently stand, so there is always something to fly without moving first. The From here filter isolates exactly those.

Completing a flight leaves you at the arrival airport, so your location, and with it your local work, moves with you.

Pay and miles

• Payout: $5 / NM (Flat rate for distance, minimum $500. Aircraft size does not change it.)

• Miles: Scaled by aircraft class (Bigger aircraft earn more miles for the same distance, up to three times the rate of a light single.)

• Travel to the departure: $0 / NM (Only when you are not already there, and you are asked before it is charged.)

Operator charter pays for the distance and nothing else. Flying a jet instead of a turboprop on the same route pays exactly the same money, and only differs in miles. Money scaling with the airframe is what the own-aircraft board is for.

Deadlines

Each contract sits on the board for 6 hours plus an hour per 250 miles of route, then expires and is removed.

The deadline applies to the offer, not to you. Once you have accepted a contract, nothing expires it and nothing penalises you for taking your time. You will get a reminder in the post if it sits for a couple of days, but the payout does not shrink.

Filtering the board

Accepting

Opening a contract shows the detail panel; Details opens the full briefing. Accepting is refused while another flight is open, and if you are somewhere else the confirmation names the travel cost before you commit.

The moment you accept, the contract is removed from the board. Releasing it afterwards does not put it back.

Common questions

I bought a new type rating and there are no contracts for it.

The board is not a live query. It was generated against the ratings you held at the time and then stored, so a rating bought afterwards has no contracts on it.

Press Refresh. The next batch covers everything you now hold, including the new type. This catches everyone once.

The board counts down to an automatic refresh. What happens when it reaches zero?

Nothing. It tells you how stale the batch is; it is not a timer that fires. Refreshing is something you do.

The one exception is a completely empty board, which seeds itself the moment you open it, so you can never be left with nothing to fly.

I refreshed and a contract I wanted disappeared.

Refresh adds a new batch on top of the old one. To stay under the board limit, the oldest unpinned contracts fall off the bottom.

Pin anything you are considering. A pinned contract is never pushed off by a refresh.

Pinning does not stop it expiring, though. If its deadline passes it goes regardless, so a pin is a shortlist, not a reservation.

Why is my aircraft only ever offered very long flights?

Each class of aircraft is given a usable slice of its own range, so contracts suit the aircraft. A long-range widebody is never offered a thirty-minute hop, because nobody charters one for that.

If your board is wall-to-wall long haul, that is the aircraft talking, not the board. Use a smaller type for short work; the range floor scales down with it.

How do I find work from the airport I am actually at?

About a third of every batch is forced to depart from wherever you currently stand, so there is always something local. The From here filter isolates exactly those, and they cost nothing extra to accept.

Your location moves as you fly: completing a flight leaves you at the arrival airport, and the next refresh biases toward there instead.

Accepting a contract from anywhere else charges you to get there, per mile, and asks first.

Why does my board have hundreds of contracts when someone else has forty?

The board is generated per aircraft variant you are rated on, ten to twenty contracts each. So it grows with your licence, not with your level.

A pilot holding one light-aircraft class rating covers a lot of variants and gets a large board of small work. A pilot with a couple of jet families gets a smaller board of bigger work. Neither is a problem: use the aircraft filter to cut it down.

Why are major airports never offered as destinations?

Large international airports are held back until you have some standing in the industry. Below the threshold they are removed from the destination pool, though never from departures, so you can always fly home from one.

The rule is applied when the batch is generated. Reaching the level does not repopulate a board you already have; refresh it and they appear.

What does it cost to take a job that starts somewhere else?

Getting yourself to the departure airport is charged per mile, shown before you confirm, and refused outright if you cannot afford it.

• Rostered airline legs are always free. The carrier positions its own crew.

• Charter charges you, because you are the one taking the job.

• Your own aircraft can add a second, larger charge to ferry the aircraft as well.

I accepted a contract and missed its deadline. What happens?

Nothing. The deadline governs how long the offer sits on the board, not how long you have to fly it. Once accepted, nothing expires the flight and the payout does not shrink.

You will get a reminder in the post if it sits unflown for a couple of days, and the Operations Center mentions it. Neither carries a penalty.

What does the In my sim filter actually do?

It hides contracts calling for aircraft you have not ticked in your Settings → MSFS hangar, so everything left is something you can genuinely load.

It is only ever a filter. Your hangar does not gate contracts, change prices or unlock anything, and leaving it empty costs you nothing except this convenience.

06. Flying your own aircraft

The board that pays for owning metal, and what it costs to use.

A different deal

On the Own aircraft tab the client has passengers and a route, and nothing else. You bring the aircraft. Because the airframe is yours, the payout scales with how much aircraft you brought, which is the only place in the game where buying metal earns anything back.

The listed payout is a base, not the price

Every contract on this board is priced as if it were flown by the smallest aircraft in the game. The real figure is worked out when you pick the aircraft, by multiplying that base by the class you chose.

The same job pays eleven times more in the largest aircraft than the smallest. Watch the figure change as you select different aircraft in the panel.

Miles do not scale

Money scales with the class. Miles do not. A heavy earns the same progression on this board as a light twin over the same distance, so flying big here is a financial decision and never a shortcut through the ranks.

Three hard requirements

An aircraft only appears in the picker when all three are satisfied. There is no margin and no override.

• Rated. You hold the rating that covers the type.

• Seats. Maximum passengers is at least what the client is booking. A 179-seat aircraft cannot take a 180-passenger job.

• Range. Published range covers the route.

What it costs to take one

Two separate charges can land on a single acceptance, and both are shown before you confirm.

Ferry pricing climbs steeply with size: pennies per mile for a light piston, hundreds for a widebody. Repositioning a large aircraft across an ocean can cost more than the job it was fetched for. Check the ferry figure against the payout before confirming.

The board follows your fleet

Roughly a third of contracts start where you are standing, and another 30% are spread across the airports where you park aircraft. A fleet scattered over four continents produces a board scattered the same way, and every job on it starts with a ferry bill.

Keeping aircraft clustered near where you fly is the single biggest thing you can do to make this board profitable.

Does owning aircraft pay?

It can, but it is never required. An airline pilot can run an entire career without owning anything, and operator charter pays the same whether you own a hangar or nothing at all. Ownership is a capital investment that only returns through this board.

• The class multiplier is the return; a light aircraft barely moves it.

• Ferry costs are the drag. An aircraft parked where the work is beats a better aircraft parked elsewhere.

• Flying a job in your own aircraft adds hours to that airframe and moves it to the arrival airport, which is free repositioning if you plan the sequence.

Common questions

The payout jumped after I picked an aircraft. Which figure is real?

The one after you picked. Contracts on this board are listed at a base price, as if flown by the smallest aircraft in the game, because until you choose there is no aircraft to price against.

Choosing multiplies it by the class you brought, from unchanged at the bottom to eleven times at the top. The same job genuinely pays an order of magnitude more in a heavy than in a light single, and that difference is the entire return on owning aircraft.

Why can my aircraft not take this job?

Three requirements, all hard, with no margin.

• You hold a rating covering the type.

• Its maximum passengers is at least what the client booked. A 179-seat aircraft cannot take 180 passengers, and there is no negotiating.

• Its published range covers the route.

Anything failing one of those is not shown in the picker at all, so an empty picker means nothing you own fits this job.

Do I earn more miles flying a bigger aircraft on this board?

No. On this board money scales with the class and miles do not, so a heavy earns the same progression as a light twin over the same distance.

Everywhere else, operator charter and rostered legs, miles do scale with the class. If you are flying to level up rather than to earn, this is the slow board.

When is paying to ferry an aircraft worth it?

Compare the ferry against the payout before confirming; both are on screen. Ferry cost climbs steeply with class, and repositioning something large over a long distance can cost more than the job you fetched it for.

• Usually worth it when the aircraft ends up somewhere with more work, since the board favours airports where you park aircraft.

• Rarely worth it for one job, especially in a large aircraft.

• Free alternative: flying a job in that aircraft moves it to the arrival airport. Chaining jobs walks the fleet where you want it at no cost.

Does buying aircraft actually pay for itself?

It can, and it is never required. An airline career can be run without owning anything, and operator charter pays identically whether you own a hangar or nothing at all.

The return comes only through this board, and rests on three things.

• Class. The multiplier is the whole return. A light aircraft barely moves it.

• Location. Ferry costs are the drag, and a scattered fleet produces a scattered board where every job opens with a bill.

• Resale. You will not get it back on sale. Aircraft are bought to be flown, not traded.

07. Airlines

Applying, signing, being paid, and what leaving costs.

Signing on

An airline gives you a rostered block of legs, a rate that scales with the carrier and with your seniority, and a free type rating on the aircraft they want you in. In return you are expected to fly the roster and keep your standing up, and leaving early costs money.

The hiring board is Contracts. Airlines is the encyclopaedia: fleets, hubs, and who flies what.

Three gates, and only two of them are visible

The standing requirement is deliberately not a listed prerequisite. Level and ratings are facts about your licence, so falling short of them stops you before you waste an application. Standing is a judgement about you as a candidate, so a short application is accepted, considered, and answered with a rejection letter.

Why the rating gate skips their own aircraft

A carrier asks for the ladder below the aircraft they operate, never the aircraft itself. They train you on that themselves when you sign. So a regional operator flying turboprops wants your piston ratings, not a turboprop rating.

If you already hold a rating on something in their fleet, the free training is not issued, because there is nothing to teach you. That also means no training bond attaches, and resigning later is markedly cheaper. Walking in already qualified is a real strategy.

Applying

1. Open Contracts. The Open for me tab filters to carriers you clear.

2. Open a carrier and press Apply.

3. The answer arrives as mail. An offer contains the contract; a rejection tells you what was short.

4. Open the offer and sign. The contract shows the hourly rate, the landing bonus, and a base picker if the carrier has several hubs. Tick the agreement and sign.

One open reply per carrier. Applying again while a rejection is still sitting in your inbox just reopens the same letter. Archive it first, then apply again once something has actually changed.

What happens the moment you sign

• You relocate to the base you picked. Free, instant. Any aircraft you own stays exactly where it was.

• You are granted a type rating on the most common aircraft in the lowest class they fly. Never the flagship.

• A block of legs is built for you and appears under Airline schedule.

• Your pay level is set to your current level, which matters more than it sounds. See below.

How the pay works

A leg pays a rate for the distance plus a flat landing bonus. Both scale with the carrier: bigger operators pay better, by 30% per step of their standing. Your own seniority adds 8% per level to the distance rate only; the landing bonus is the carrier’s alone.

Your pay follows your pay level, not your pilot level, and the two drift apart. Levelling up does not give you a raise. Pay only catches up when you accept a contract renegotiation, which your employer offers when you cross a rank boundary. Until then you fly at the rate you signed at. Declining costs nothing except the raise: the next promotion offers again and catches up everything at once.

Leaving

Resigning charges severance of $10,000 plus whatever is left of your training bond, and takes a bite out of your standing.

Two things make leaving cheap. Flying out the bond, which takes 30 hours, or never taking their training in the first place. And one case is free outright: signing and resigning immediately, having flown nothing and been granted nothing, costs zero.

The bond counts flying hours, not calendar time. A career left alone for a year owes exactly what it owed the day it stopped.

Switching

Signing with someone new while employed is a resignation and a signing in one action. The exit cost is calculated against the employer you are leaving, and if you have a rostered leg open it is cancelled first, with its own cancellation penalty on top. Finish the leg before you switch.

Being let go

Dismissal costs nothing. No severance, no bond clawback, no hit to your standing. It arrives as mail and only takes effect when you acknowledge it, though the performance that caused it does not go away by leaving the letter unopened.

Common questions

An airline will not hire me even though I meet its level.

Three things are checked and only two are on the board.

• Level. Listed, and it blocks the button.

• Ratings. Listed. They want the ladder below the aircraft they fly, not the aircraft itself, so a turboprop operator wants your piston ratings.

• Standing. Not listed anywhere. Larger carriers expect a reputation to match their size.

If the Apply button works but the answer is no, standing was the problem, and the letter says so.

Why did my application get rejected instead of the button being disabled?

Because the two kinds of shortfall are different in kind. Level and ratings are facts about your licence, checkable before you waste an application, so they stop you at the button.

Standing is a judgement about you as a candidate. A qualified applicant with a patchy record gets considered and turned down, which is a letter, not an error message.

Can I apply again after being turned down?

Yes, but archive the rejection letter first. Only one open reply per carrier exists at a time, so applying again while it is still sitting there simply reopens the same letter.

Change something before you do: fly a few clean legs to lift your standing, or pick up the rating that was missing. Reapplying unchanged gets the same answer.

I signed and never got the free type rating.

You were already rated on something in their fleet, so there was nothing to train you on.

This is worth having on purpose. No rating issued means no training bond attached, and resigning later costs the severance alone rather than severance plus most of a rating. Arriving already qualified is a real strategy.

When it is issued, it is for the most common aircraft in the lowest class they fly, never the flagship.

What does resigning cost, and when is it free?

Two charges, and one of them melts away as you fly.

• Severance, $10,000. Flat, and it does not reduce with service.

• The training bond. Most of what the rating they gave you was worth, falling to nothing over 30 hours flown for them. On an expensive class this dwarfs the severance on day one.

There is also a hit to your standing, which fades faster than the bond does.

Two ways to make it cheap. Fly out the bond first, which takes 30 hours. Or never take their training: if you signed already rated on something in their fleet, no rating was issued, no bond attached, and only the severance applies.

One case is free outright. Sign, fly nothing, be granted nothing, resign immediately, and it costs zero.

The bond counts flying hours, not calendar time. A career left alone for a year owes exactly what it owed the day it stopped.

Is switching different from resigning and then signing?

It is exactly that, in one action, with the exit cost calculated against the employer you are leaving.

One thing to watch: if you have a rostered leg open, switching cancels it first, and that cancellation carries its own charge and its own hit to your standing, on top of severance and bond. Finish the leg before you switch and you avoid all of it.

I levelled up and my pay did not change.

Your pay follows your pay level, which is set when you sign and then stays put. Your pilot level keeps climbing without it, and the two drift apart.

They are brought back together by a contract renegotiation, which your employer offers when you cross a rank boundary. Accept it in your Inbox and your rate catches up to everything you have earned since.

So a jump from one rank to the next raises nothing until the promotion itself arrives. Quoted rates on the hiring board use your real level, which is why an offer elsewhere can look better than it is.

Do I have to accept a renegotiation offer?

No, and declining costs nothing except the raise you turned down. The next promotion offers again and catches up everything at once, so you lose the difference in the meantime and nothing else. There is no penalty and no mark on your record.

What happens to my aircraft when I sign with an airline?

Nothing happens to them, and that is the catch. Signing relocates you to the hub you picked, instantly and free. Your own aircraft stay exactly where they were.

So the next own-aircraft job you take will want the aircraft ferried to you, at a cost. If you fly your own metal, move it before you sign, or pick a hub near where it sits.

08. The rotation

Schedule blocks, skipping, regenerating, and custom routes.

The block

Once you sign, your employer builds you a block of legs: a default of 10, one aircraft and one registration for the whole run, flown in order. Finish it and you generate the next one. It lives under Airline schedule.

Only the top leg is live

You fly the first leg that is still pending. You cannot reach past it to a more interesting sector further down: each one has to be flown or handed back before the next becomes available.

Accepting a leg opens it as your Live Flight exactly like a charter, except positioning to the departure airport is free.

How the block is built

• The aircraft is the type your employer has most of that you are rated on. You can pin a different one in the preferences if you hold the rating.

• The routes come from that carrier’s real network, filtered to what the aircraft can actually reach.

• The shape is your choice: an open chain that wanders, a hub pattern that keeps returning to base, or strict out-and-back pairs.

• Leg length can be held to short, medium or long sectors, or left mixed.

Some legs are marked as positioning. Those are repositioning sectors the generator had to insert because the network had no onward route from where you were. They pay and count like any other leg.

If a block comes back empty, one of three things is true: you are not rated on anything in the fleet, your base is not one of their hubs, or the aircraft cannot reach anything from where you are. Changing the base or the aircraft in the preferences is usually the fix.

Handing a leg back

Skipping drops the top leg and moves to the next. You get an allowance of free skips per block, and after that they cost.

• Free skips: 2 per 10 legs (A 10-leg block gives you 2 for nothing.)

• After that, money: $2,500 (Per skipped leg.)

• After that, standing: −5 (Free skips leave no mark at all.)

Cancelling a leg you have already started also consumes a free skip, on top of its own cancellation penalty. The leg is recorded as handed back either way, and the allowance cannot tell the difference.

Regenerating

You can rebuild the block from the preferences at any time, and you must after the last leg is flown. Rebuilding replaces the whole block.

Rebuilding mid-block discards the legs you have already flown from that block. The flights themselves are safe, they are in your logbook and you were paid, but the block restarts from leg one. Regenerate at the end of a block, or when it is genuinely unflyable, rather than to reshuffle a sector you do not fancy.

Adding a route of your own

The schedules are a snapshot of what each carrier actually flies, so they will not have a service that was dropped years ago, one that only runs in summer, or one you simply wish existed. You can write it in yourself, and from then on the carrier flies it.

Open World → Airlines, pick the carrier, and use the route card on its record. Here is what goes in:

Your route appears on the network map straight away. It joins the pool the roster draws from the next time a block is built, so an existing block will not suddenly contain it; finish the block, or rebuild it from the preferences.

Both airports need a three-letter code. The roster resolves airports by that code, so a route into a field that has none could never be scheduled and is refused rather than silently ignored. The aircraft still has to be able to reach the far end, and you still have to be rated on it, exactly as with a route the carrier filed itself.

Times on the roster

Common questions

How do I get a rotation that keeps coming back to base?

Open the schedule preferences and choose the pattern.

• Out and back is the strict version: every leg out is paired with the leg home. You are never more than one sector from base.

• Hub focused wanders but pulls back toward base, and the longer you have been away the more likely the next leg returns. It is forced home after a few sectors out.

• Open chains onward wherever the network goes, and can leave you a long way from home at the end of the block.

The pattern can only work with the routes the carrier actually flies. A small operator with few routes from your base produces a repetitive block whatever you pick, and changing base is often the better fix.

I regenerated my block halfway through and lost my progress.

Regenerating replaces the whole block, not just the legs still to come, so the ones you had already flown are no longer part of it and the block restarts at leg one.

Nothing real was lost. Those flights are in your logbook, you were paid, and the miles and hours all stand. What restarts is the block itself.

Regenerate at the end of a block, or when one is genuinely unflyable, rather than to reshuffle a sector you do not fancy. Skipping is the tool for that.

How many legs can I hand back before it costs me?

You get an allowance that scales with the length of the block, shown in the header as skips used. Within it, skipping is free and leaves no mark. Past it, each skip costs money and a slice of your standing.

Watch one thing: cancelling a leg you have already started also consumes a free skip, on top of its own cancellation charge. The leg is recorded as handed back either way, and the allowance cannot tell the difference between the two.

Why can I not skip ahead to a later leg?

A roster is flown in order, so only the leg at the front is live. To reach a sector further down you have to fly or hand back everything before it. You also cannot skip anything while a leg is open; finish or cancel that one first.

My roster is empty or will not generate.

Three causes, in order of likelihood.

• You are not rated on anything they fly. The generator only uses fleet types you hold a rating for.

• Your base is not one of their hubs. Allowed, but the network may have no routes from there.

• Nothing is in range. Routes longer than the chosen aircraft can fly are filtered out, which can empty a block entirely on a short-range type.

Changing the base or the aircraft in the schedule preferences fixes almost every case.

Can I fly a route my airline does not schedule?

Yes, you can write one in yourself. Open World → Airlines, pick the carrier, and add the route on its record.

• Flight number in the carrier’s own form: two or three letters and up to four digits, like KL1007.

• From and to, searched by name, city or code, and they have to differ.

• Times as local 24-hour HH:MM, or left blank to let the roster pick a plausible slot.

It shows on the network map immediately and joins the pool the roster draws from the next time a block is built, alongside their real routes. An existing block will not gain it, so finish that block or rebuild it.

Both airports need a three-letter code, because that is how the generator resolves a route. A small field without one is refused, and the message names the airport. Range and your ratings apply as they would to any other leg.

Some legs are marked positioning. What are those?

Repositioning sectors the generator had to insert because the network had no onward route from where the previous leg left you. They are flown, paid and scored exactly like any other leg; the label just explains why an otherwise odd-looking sector is in your block.

The times on my roster changed after I fetched a flight plan.

They did, and the new ones are the real ones. The times a block is generated with are flavour, a plausible slot so the roster reads like a duty pattern.

Fetching a plan replaces the active leg’s times with the plan’s own, and those are what your on-time score is judged against.

Flying

09. Briefing and dispatch

SimBrief, the flight plan, and what you lose without one.

Why dispatch at all

A flight plan turns a route into a schedule. It gives you a departure and arrival time, fuel figures, a cruise level, and the airways you are meant to fly. Without one the flight works perfectly well, it simply has nothing to be late against.

Linking your account

1. Create a free account at simbrief.com.

2. Put your pilot ID or username into Settings → Pilot profile. Done once, for the whole career.

The two buttons

The pre-filled passenger figure comes from the real load on your contract, and weights are forced into the same units the app uses, so the fuel numbers you get back reconcile with the briefing rather than sitting next to it in a different currency.

What arrives with the plan

• Scheduled off-blocks and on-blocks times, which the on-time score uses.

• Block, trip, taxi and alternate fuel, plus the estimated weights.

• Cruise level and cost index.

• The filed route, drawn on the map through its real waypoints, with a top-of-descent marker.

• Departure and arrival runways, the procedures, and the alternate.

• The plan document itself, readable in the briefing.

Flying without one

What you lose is specific and worth knowing before you decide to skip it.

Nothing is penalised. Payout and miles are identical either way.

The plan it fetches is your latest one

Fetching pulls whatever plan is newest on your account, not one tied to this flight. If the origin or destination does not match the flight you have open, you are asked before anything is applied.

Accepting a mismatched plan applies it in full, which means your arrival is judged against that plan’s schedule. If you generated it for a different route, decline and generate the right one.

When fetch will not work

The full briefing

Full briefing on the Live Flight header opens the whole package across eight tabs: overview, flight plan, weather, communications, crew, passengers, weight and fuel, and the plan document.

The weight and fuel tab is the one to check before pushing back. It draws your operating weight, zero-fuel weight, take-off weight, landing weight, ramp weight and payload against their limits, and turns a bar red when one is exceeded. Sections that need a plan say so rather than showing zeroes.

Common questions

How do I link SimBrief, and what do I lose without it?

Make a free account, then put your pilot ID or username into Settings → Pilot profile. That is the whole setup, once per career.

Without one, the flight works and pays exactly the same. What you give up is:

• The on-time part of your score, entirely. No plan means no scheduled arrival, so there is nothing to be judged against and the score becomes landing-only.

• Cruise level, block time, fuel figures and the alternate in the briefing.

• The real route on the map. You get a dashed straight line, no waypoints, no top of descent, no waypoint estimates.

Nothing is penalised for skipping it. A landing-only score is rescaled so it still reads out of 100.

It keeps saying there is no flight plan on file.

Fetching does not create a plan, it collects one. If you have not generated anything on your account, there is nothing to collect.

1. Press Open SimBrief. It opens dispatch already filled in for this flight.

2. Generate the plan there and wait for it to finish.

3. Come back and press Fetch OFP.

If it still fails, check the pilot ID in Settings. A typo there looks exactly like an empty account.

I fetched a plan for the wrong route by mistake.

Fetching pulls the newest plan on your account, whatever route it was for. There is no per-flight link between the two, so if you generated something else in between, that is what comes back.

You are asked before anything is applied, naming both routes. Decline, generate the right plan, and fetch again.

If you accept it, its schedule becomes what your arrival is judged against, and it also rewrites the times on your rostered leg. Fetching a correct plan afterwards puts it right.

Why do the SimBrief fuel numbers not match my briefing?

They should match, and three things are done to make sure they do.

• Dispatch is opened with weights forced into the units the app uses.

• The passenger count is pre-filled from the actual load on your contract, not left at a default.

• Figures that do come back in other units are converted on the way in.

They diverge if you change the aircraft, the passenger count or the units in dispatch after it opens. Generate with what was filled in, or expect the difference.

What is in the full briefing that the side panel does not show?

Eight tabs: overview, flight plan, weather, communications, crew, passengers, weight and fuel, and the plan document itself.

The one worth opening every time is weight and fuel. It draws your operating weight, zero-fuel weight, take-off weight, landing weight, ramp weight and payload against their limits, and turns a bar red when one is exceeded, which is the quickest way to catch a load that will not fly.

The flight plan tab has the full navigation log with airways and coordinates, the procedures, and the dispatch details. Tabs that need a plan say so rather than showing zeroes.

10. The live flight

The page you fly from, the map, and starting the clock.

The page you fly from

Live Flight holds one flight: the briefing on the left, the map on the right, and the controls that start and end it pinned at the bottom. You do not have to keep it open. Recording happens whether you are looking at it or not.

The briefing rail

• Route and figures. Both airports with their scheduled times, a progress bar, and eight figures: payout, miles, distance, bearing, cruise level, block time, block fuel and the alternate. The last four stay blank until a flight plan is fetched.

• Filed route. The routing string, once a plan exists.

• Weather. Live reports for both ends with a flight-category badge, and a refresh button. It updates itself every fifteen minutes.

• Actions. Dispatch buttons and Start while briefing; End and Cancel once you are flying.

Starting

Three things have to be true, and the button tells you which one is missing.

There is no offline start. Scoring is a reading taken from the simulator, and a flight nobody watched cannot produce one, so the app would rather refuse than record a flight it cannot grade.

Moving before you start

If the aircraft starts rolling while the flight is still in briefing, a banner appears saying so, with a button to start there and then. It is worth heeding: anything flown before you press Start is not recorded, and the track begins where the clock did.

Turning on Auto-start flight in Settings avoids the problem entirely: the flight flips to live by itself once the engines are running and you begin to move.

The map

• Chart or satellite, toggled bottom left. Your choice is remembered.

• The route is drawn solid through the filed waypoints when a plan exists, dashed and direct when it does not. Waypoints name themselves on hover, and an amber dot marks the top of descent.

• The trail is your actual track, in amber, appearing as you fly.

• The aircraft is shaped by class and turned to your heading. It is only drawn while connected.

• Follow, bottom right, keeps the map centred on you. Dragging the map turns it off.

The telemetry bar

Overlaid on the map while connected: indicated and ground speed, altitude, vertical speed, heading, g, and the phase of flight. Vertical speed and g change colour as they get punchy, which makes an unstable final obvious without reading numbers.

Pausing the simulator replaces it with a paused marker. Nothing accumulates while paused: not the track, not warning time, not discipline findings.

The progress strip

Below the map: a six-stage stepper from departure to arrival, and six tiles for fuel remaining, distance flown, distance to go, cruise level, wind and temperature, and an estimate for arrival with the next waypoint under it. The fuel bar turns amber and then red as the tanks empty. The arrival estimate hides itself below taxi speed, where it would be meaningless.

If the link drops

A banner appears. The flight stays open, everything flown so far is saved, and the link comes back on its own. The gap itself is not recorded, and ending the flight is blocked until telemetry returns, because the app cannot confirm where you are.

Closing the app mid-flight is also survivable. The flight is on disk and will be waiting. At worst you lose the last half minute of trail and a few seconds of accumulated warning time.

Common questions

How much of my flight is actually recorded in the track?

Enough to redraw the flight faithfully, and no more. Rather than sampling on a fixed clock, a point is kept whenever something changes: a turn, a climb or descent, or distance covered, with the distance threshold scaling with speed. Taxiing keeps fine detail; cruising in a straight line keeps very little.

A short domestic flight ends up a few hundred points and a long-haul a couple of thousand, which is why the replay in your logbook is smooth without the file being enormous.

My aircraft marker is missing, or the numbers have stopped moving.

Three different causes, distinguishable at a glance.

• Marker gone, banner showing. The link is down. It returns on its own; nothing is lost except the gap.

• Paused marker instead of the telemetry bar. The simulator is paused. Nothing accumulates while it is.

• Connected, but never any numbers. The simulator is in a menu or a loading screen. Load a flight.

Hover the status pill in the title bar to settle it. Its last line says how long ago the last frame arrived.

It warned me the aircraft is moving but the flight has not started.

Exactly what it says, and it is worth acting on. Nothing before you press Start is recorded: no track, no discipline, no block time. If you taxi out and take off first, the flight begins wherever you happened to be when you noticed.

The banner has a button that starts it there and then. To avoid the problem for good, turn on Auto-start flight in Settings → Simulator: the flight goes live by itself once the engines are running and you begin to move.

What is the phase label for?

It is the app’s reading of what part of the flight you are in, from preflight through taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise, descent, approach and landing to shutdown, worked out from your altitude, speed and configuration.

It is not just decoration. Some discipline checks only apply in certain phases, the seatbelt sign in particular, which is only expected on during taxi, takeoff, approach and landing.

My app or PC crashed mid-flight. What did I lose?

Very little. The flight lives on disk, not in the window, so reopening the app puts you back on the same flight in the same state.

• The track is written every half minute, so at most that much trail is missing.

• Warning and discipline counters are written every few seconds.

• The landing figures are saved the moment the touchdown is measured, so a crash after landing keeps them.

• Block time is measured from your first recorded movement, so a long pause before departure never inflates it.

One thing to know: fuel burn needs a reading after the restart. Ending the flight immediately on reopening can leave the burn figure blank.

11. Completion

Ending a flight, release and cancel, and the Operations Center.

Ending a flight

Taxi in, stop, and press End flight. Payout, miles, score, standing and the logbook entry all land in one go, and you are moved to the arrival airport.

Three conditions, same as starting but at the other end.

Landing somewhere else

There is no diversion mechanic. The alternate on your plan is information, not an option you can exercise. If you land at the wrong airport, the end control stays locked and tells you how far away you are.

Two ways out: fly or taxi to the airport on the contract, or cancel the flight and pay for it.

Letting it end itself

Auto-complete on parking in Settings → Simulator closes the flight when you are parked. Off by default. It needs all of these at once:

• On the ground, within three miles of the arrival airport

• Engines shut down

• Stationary

• Held that way for a few consecutive readings

• And you must actually have flown: it will not close a flight that never moved

If it is not firing, the usual culprit is an engine still running. The check watches the first engine only, so a multi with one still turning counts as running. Pausing the simulator also suspends it.

Release, cancel, skip

Three different ways to get rid of a flight, and they are not interchangeable.

Releasing a charter contract destroys it. It left the board when you accepted, and releasing does not put it back. A roster leg does return to your block and can be flown later.

Cancelling a roster leg costs twice: the cancellation charge, and one of your free skips, because the leg is recorded as handed back either way.

What lands when a flight completes

• Payout in full. The score never reduces it.

• Miles in full, at the figure fixed when you accepted.

• Standing moves, up or down, by a few points at most.

• You relocate to the arrival airport, and so does your aircraft if it was yours.

• Hours accrue, against your employer if it was a roster leg, against the airframe if you owned it.

• The logbook entry is written, with the full track and score breakdown.

Ending a flight that never flew

If you end a flight without a recorded touchdown, it pays out normally and scores zero, with no breakdown at all. There is nothing to grade. That zero is real: it lands in your logbook and counts toward your employer’s rolling view of your flying.

The Operations Center

A dispatcher reading the same flight you are. It holds no information of its own, it re-reads your flight, your plan, the weather and the sim link, and raises what looks wrong. Six desks: weather, flight plan, fuel, airports, crew and aircraft.

Anything raised during flight, an overspeed or a stall warning, appears here at the same thresholds the score uses, so the console and the debrief can never disagree.

Acknowledging a message clears it for this flight only, and acknowledgements do not survive a restart. The two your airline attaches to a rotation, no APU and a reduced-flap landing, cannot be acknowledged at all: they stand until the flight is over, because the moment either one matters is on the approach.

Running late

If your projected arrival slips past the allowance, the console says by how much and suggests a higher cost index. That is a nudge to fly faster, not something applied for you.

Common questions

End flight is greyed out and I have already landed.

Three conditions, and the tooltip names the one that is failing.

• Within three miles of the arrival airport. It tells you how far out you are. Landing on a long runway at a large field can leave you outside it until you taxi in.

• Under five knots. Come to a complete stop.

• The sim link is live. If it is down, the flight stays open and waits; the app cannot confirm where you are.

I landed at the wrong airport. What are my options?

There is no diversion. The alternate on your plan is information, not something you can exercise, and the flight can only be completed at the airport on the contract.

Two ways out.

• Fly or taxi there. Nothing expires an accepted flight, so a short repositioning hop costs you only time and pays in full.

• Cancel. Half the payout, a hit to your standing, and no logbook entry.

What is the difference between release, cancel and skip?

• Release is only available before you start, and is completely free. A rostered leg goes back into your block. A charter contract is destroyed, because it left the board when you accepted and does not come back.

• Cancel is for a flight already under way. It costs half the payout and a slice of standing, more on a rostered leg than on charter, and writes nothing to your logbook.

• Skip only applies to a rostered leg you have not accepted yet. Free within your allowance.

Cancelling a rostered leg costs twice over: the cancellation charge, plus one of your free skips, because the leg is recorded as handed back either way.

Auto-complete is not firing even though I am parked.

All of these have to be true at once, held for a few consecutive readings.

• On the ground and within three miles of the arrival airport

• Every engine shut down. This is the usual culprit. The check watches the first engine, so one still turning counts as running.

• Stationary

• The simulator not paused

• And you must actually have flown; it will not close a flight that never moved

It is off by default, so check it is on in Settings → Simulator. The manual button always works regardless.

Can the app start and end flights for me?

Yes, two settings under Settings → Simulator, both off until you turn them on.

• Auto-start flight goes live once the engines are running and you begin to move. It never starts a flight you have not accepted, and it never stops one.

• Auto-complete on parking closes the flight once you are parked at the destination with the engines off.

The manual buttons keep working with both on, so turning them on takes nothing away.

I ended a flight and scored zero with no breakdown.

No touchdown was recorded, so there was nothing to grade. That happens if you never actually landed, or if the link was down through the landing.

The payout and miles are still paid in full. Your standing does not move either way, because a flight with no landing is neither good nor bad.

The zero is real, though. It goes into your logbook and counts toward your employer’s rolling view of your flying, so a habit of ending flights early does eventually draw a letter.

What is the Operations Center for?

A dispatcher reading the same flight you are. It holds nothing of its own: it re-reads your flight, your plan, the weather and the sim link, and raises what looks wrong before you find out the hard way.

Six desks, weather, flight plan, fuel, airports, crew and aircraft, each showing whether it is happy. Items needing a decision are marked as such, and acknowledging one clears it for this flight.

It is advisory throughout. Nothing there blocks a flight, and ignoring it costs nothing directly. It is a chance to catch a fuel figure or a weather problem while it is still cheap to fix.

It says my alternate is no better than my destination.

The weather desk checked both ends and found the destination below decent conditions, then checked your alternate and found it no better. An alternate is only useful if it is somewhere you could actually get in.

The fix is dispatch, not the app: generate a plan with an alternate that has better weather. The related warning, no alternate filed at all with poor weather at the destination, has the same fix.

It says my airframe does not match the plan.

The aircraft loaded in the simulator was recognised as a different type to the one the job is for. Usually you loaded the wrong one.

It only speaks up when it is confident. An add-on it does not recognise stays silent rather than accusing you, so no warning is not proof you are in the right aircraft. It is also only raised before you start.

It says I am running late and suggests a cost index.

It has projected your arrival from your current ground speed and compared it with your scheduled time, and you are outside the allowance. The suggested cost index is a nudge toward flying faster, sized to the deficit. Nothing is applied for you and nothing is penalised at that moment; it is a chance to make the time up before the on-time score is taken.

12. Scoring

Landing, on-time, discipline, and what the score changes.

What the score is

A reading out of 100 taken at completion. It is a quality judgement on how the flight was flown, and it moves your standing. It does not move your money.

Payout and miles are credited in full whatever you score. A poor landing still pays; a perfect one earns no bonus. The score matters because standing decides who hires you, what work is offered, and whether you keep the job you have.

The mark sheet

Every flight is marked on the same areas, each out of 100, and the total is their weighted average. Nothing is subtracted afterwards: an area you flew badly pulls the average down by exactly its share, which is why the debrief can show you what each one cost and have the lines add up to the number at the top.

An area that could not be measured drops out and the rest are rescaled. Fly without a filed plan and punctuality is not counted rather than counted as zero; fly something without a cabin and the seatbelt sign is not counted at all.

Route adherence is not scored yet. It will become another area.

What each licence class is marked on

The areas are the same everywhere; what they are worth is not. A business jet is judged almost entirely on arriving smoothly and on the minute, because that is what the person in the back notices. An airliner is judged on the whole job. A light aircraft is stick and rudder with no timetable to keep.

The airline classes also carry an APU and a flap area, each worth a few percent, but only on a rotation that actually came with that instruction.

The landing

Sink rate at touchdown is the larger part, blended with the peak g recorded through the contact. The bands are deliberately coarse: nobody feels the difference between 180 and 190 feet per minute, and the sensor jitters at that resolution anyway.

The softest band is not the best one. Arriving at under 100 feet per minute scores below the 100 to 200 band, because holding the aircraft off until it settles that gently is a float, not a landing. Aim to plant it inside the band, not to grease it.

Peak g above 1.4 raises a hard-landing flag in the debrief separately from the score.

On time

• Early is never punished. Arriving ahead of schedule scores full marks.

• There is a grace window after your scheduled arrival where you still score full marks.

• Past it, 2.5 points a minute, reaching zero somewhere under an hour late.

Airline rotations run a tighter grace window than charter work.

Discipline

The discipline areas are all measured in seconds, and they all work the same way. Stay clean and the area scores 100. Reach its allowance and it scores 70. Past that it keeps falling, and it reaches zero at a bit over three times the allowance.

What a lapse costs you depends on what you are flying. Thirty seconds with an overspeed warning is most of a supersonic check ride and a footnote on a business jet, because the two classes weight speed differently. The same seconds, a different price.

These counters are written to disk as you fly, so closing the app mid-flight does not reset them. The seatbelt check is skipped on light aircraft that have no such sign, and the APU and flap checks only exist when a rotation carries that restriction, which the briefing tells you about.

Turning checks off

Each of the five findings, and the warning meter, has its own switch under Settings → Simulator → Flight scoring. All on by default.

Switching one off stops it counting entirely: no score cost, and no escalation from your employer either, since there is nothing on the tape for them to read.

Landing rate and on-time arrival cannot be switched off. They are the score.

Score to standing

Par is 70. Above it you gain standing, below it you lose some, capped at 3 either way so that no single flight makes or breaks a career.

A flight with no recorded touchdown scores zero but moves your standing by nothing, rather than by the full penalty. There was no landing to judge.

The debrief

Every completed flight keeps its full record in the Logbook: the score breakdown component by component, the warning and finding lines with their durations, the landing analysis, altitude and speed profiles, and the ground track with a replay you can scrub and speed up.

You will see the same landing described three ways: a colour in the list, a verdict in the landing card, and a band in the score. They use different cut-offs on purpose. The list colour is a glance, the card is a plain-language verdict, and only the score band is what actually counted.

What the airline does with it

Scores follow you. A run of poor flights draws a written warning and then, if it does not improve, dismissal. Repeated findings of the same kind build strikes that turn into fines. Both systems are covered under Inbox.

Common questions

How is a flight score actually put together?

Two components make the base: how you landed, worth the larger share, and whether you arrived on time, worth the rest. The landing is your sink rate at touchdown blended with the peak g through the contact.

If a component could not be measured it is dropped and the remaining weight is rescaled, so a flight without a flight plan is scored on the landing alone and still reads out of 100. It is not capped at the landing’s share.

Two sets of penalties then come off: time spent with a warning sounding, counted by the second, and a set of discipline findings, counted once each. Both are separately capped.

My softest landing scored lower than a firmer one. Why?

Because the softest band is not the best band. Touching down at under 100 feet per minute scores below the 100 to 200 band above it.

Arriving that gently usually means holding the aircraft off and letting it settle, which is a float rather than a landing: it eats runway, it is not repeatable, and no airline wants it. A firm, positive touchdown inside the band is the target.

The g reading is the other part. A gentle rate arrived at with a sharp arrest still shows up in the peak g, which carries the remainder of the landing score.

Does my score change what I get paid?

No. Payout and miles are both fixed when you accept a job and paid in full when you finish it, whatever the score. A bad landing still pays; a perfect one earns no bonus.

What the score moves is your standing, by a few points either way. Standing decides who will hire you, what work arrives unasked, and whether you keep your job. So flying well pays, just never on the same flight.

One exception exists: a hand-picked job from your inbox pays a completion bonus if you score well.

How late can I be before it costs me?

Arriving early is never punished; it scores full marks however early. After your scheduled arrival there is a grace window that also scores full marks, tighter on a rostered leg than on charter work.

Past that, the component falls by a couple of points a minute and reaches zero somewhere under an hour late. Since it is only part of the total, even a very late arrival with a good landing still scores respectably.

The Operations Center warns you while there is still time to make it up, and suggests a faster cost index.

Which discipline checks can cost me points?

Two different systems, which is why they feel inconsistent.

• Warnings are metered. Every second with an overspeed or stall warning sounding costs, so the longer it runs the worse it gets, up to a cap.

• Findings are counted. Seatbelt sign, beacon, taxi speed, APU and flap restrictions each have a grace window. Cross it and it costs a fixed amount for the whole flight, whether it ran for thirty seconds or thirty minutes. Stay under it and nothing is recorded at all.

The two pools are capped separately, so even a thoroughly undisciplined flight cannot be zeroed by them alone. Repeating the same finding is punished across flights instead, through your employer.

If I switch a scoring check off, does that also stop the fines?

Yes. A check that is off accumulates nothing, so it costs no score, appears in no debrief, and cannot build a strike or trigger a fine. There is nothing on the tape for anyone to read.

The switches are under Settings → Simulator → Flight scoring, one per check, all on by default.

Landing rate and on-time arrival cannot be switched off. They are the score.

My airline is fining me. What for, and how do I stop it?

Repeating the same finding builds a strike of that kind. The first few draw a written warning; past that they turn into money, growing with each strike up to a ceiling.

A clean flight takes one strike back off, so the way out is simply to fly a few legs without that finding. You do not have to be perfect, only to stop repeating the same thing.

Only rostered flights count. Charter work never builds strikes, and a check you have switched off cannot build one either.

Can I actually be fired for flying badly?

Yes, by two independent routes.

• Your recent average. A rolling average of your last few flights for this employer. Fall below one threshold and you get a written warning; keep falling and it becomes a dismissal.

• Your standing. Low enough is grounds on its own, even with technically clean flying.

You are never dismissed without a warning first, and the average needs a handful of flights before it counts at all, so one rough evening cannot cost you the job. Being dismissed costs nothing: no severance, no bond, no hit to your standing.

My rotation says no APU, or asks for reduced flap. What if I ignore it?

Occasionally a rostered jet flight carries an operating restriction, noted in the briefing. Each has a short grace window, and breaching it for longer costs points, more than most findings, because it is a written instruction for this flight rather than a habit.

The Operations Center goes to its loudest state while you are actually in breach, so you get a chance to correct it before it counts. Ignoring it repeatedly builds strikes like any other finding.

Reduced flap means the last detent on the lever stays unused; anything above it is within the instruction. Which number that is depends on the aircraft, so the check reads the lever your airframe actually has rather than assuming a setting.

Can I watch a flight back afterwards?

Yes. Open the flight in your Logbook. The report has the full ground track with a player: play, pause, scrub, follow the aircraft, expand the map, and speed up to a couple of hours a minute. The telemetry row follows wherever you scrub to.

Below it are altitude and speed profiles with your top of climb, steepest descent and touchdown marked, a landing analysis, the score breakdown line by line, and a timeline of events derived from the track.

The same landing is described three different ways. Which is right?

All three, for different purposes. They use different cut-offs on purpose.

• The colour in the logbook list is a glance across many flights.

• The verdict in the landing card is plain language for one flight.

• The band in the score breakdown is what actually counted.

When they disagree, the score breakdown is the one that decided your points.

What is in the logbook export?

Two formats. CSV suits other logbook trackers; JSON is everything, unabridged. Both cover the flight rows: dates, routes, aircraft, times, block minutes, landing figures, scores and payouts.

Neither includes the ground track, the score breakdown detail, the flight plan snapshot or the crew and passenger lists. Those exist only inside the app, so keep a career backup as well if you want to preserve them.

The flight plan in my logbook does not match what I flew.

It is not meant to. That block is a frozen copy of the plan as filed, kept so you can see what you intended. There is deliberately no planned-versus-actual comparison yet, so the figures beside it are what you planned, not what happened. Your actual times, fuel burned and track are recorded separately in the same report.

Your career

13. Miles and ranks

The level curve, what earns miles, and the two rank ladders.

Miles

Every completed flight pays miles, and miles are the only thing that raises your level. The figure is fixed when you accept a job, shown on the contract before you take it, and paid in full when you finish. How well you flew does not change it.

The curve

Each level costs more than the last. The first few go quickly, an hour or two of flying each, and the climb steepens from there. Level 30 is the top.

Your level is derived from your total miles rather than stored separately, so the two can never disagree.

What pays miles

• Distance is the base of every job.

• Aircraft class multiplies it, on operator charter, roster legs and inbox offers.

• Position in a block adds a small amount to later legs, so finishing a rotation is worth slightly more than starting one.

The own-aircraft board is the exception: its money scales hard with class, its miles do not scale at all. If you are flying to progress rather than to earn, that board is the slow way.

Flying badly does not slow you down

Miles and payout are both fixed at acceptance and paid whatever the score. A career made entirely of scraped landings advances at exactly the same rate as a career of perfect ones. What suffers is your standing, and standing is what decides which jobs are on offer in the first place.

What levels unlock

• Ratings. Each rating has a level requirement before you can buy it.

• Employers. Every carrier has a minimum, and it is the first thing they check.

• Destinations. Major international airports appear as charter destinations from level 6.

• Pay. Seniority raises the rate, though only once a renegotiation catches your pay level up to your actual level.

• Rank. And crossing a rank boundary is what triggers that renegotiation offer.

Levelling shows a summary of everything the jump unlocked, including aircraft that just came into reach and carriers that will now consider you.

Two rank ladders

Your title depends on your level and on whether you currently fly for someone. They are separate ladders, not one ladder with two labels.

Employed

Independent

Resigning moves you across ladders, not down one. A Captain who leaves reads as a Senior Charter Captain the next morning. Nothing has been taken away; you are simply being described by the work you now do.

Hours

Three different hour figures exist and they will not match, because they measure different things.

Employer hours are the ones that matter for a training bond and for long-service recognition.

Where to look

Career, reached from the pilot card at the bottom of the sidebar, holds your licence, rank, standing, event history and progress to the next level.

Common questions

What is the fastest way to earn miles?

Distance in the largest aircraft you are rated for. Two things drive it.

• Distance is the base, so one long sector beats several short ones for the same time in the air.

• Aircraft class multiplies it, up to three times the rate of a light single on the same route.

Rostered legs add a small bonus to later legs in a block, so finishing a rotation is worth slightly more than starting one.

The exception is the own-aircraft board, where money scales hard with the class and miles do not scale at all. It is the wrong board to level on.

Does flying badly slow my progression?

Not directly. Miles and payout are fixed when you accept a job and paid in full whatever you score, so a career of scraped landings levels at exactly the same rate as a career of perfect ones.

It catches up with you indirectly. Poor scores drag your standing down, and standing decides which employers will have you and what work arrives unasked. You keep levelling; the quality of what you are levelling through drops.

What does levelling up actually give me?

• Ratings. Each family has a level requirement before you can buy it.

• Employers. Every carrier has a minimum, and it is the first thing checked.

• Destinations. Major international airports enter the charter destination pool once you have some standing.

• Rank, and crossing a rank boundary is what makes your employer offer to renegotiate your pay.

Levelling itself does not raise your pay. The renegotiation does, and only once you accept it.

I resigned and my rank title went backwards.

It moved sideways, not backwards. There are two ladders: one for pilots flying for an airline, one for pilots working independently. Which one describes you depends on whether you currently have an employer.

So a Captain who resigns reads as a Senior Charter Captain the next morning. No level was lost and nothing was taken away; you are being described by the work you now do. Sign somewhere and the airline title returns at once.

My career hours do not match my logbook.

Three different figures, counting three different things.

• The logbook holds real block time, from moving off to stopping. This is the honest total.

• The career page shows an estimate derived from your miles. It is a placeholder and it will drift.

• Employer hours count only what you have flown for your current employer, and reset to zero every time you sign somewhere new.

Employer hours are the ones that matter in practice: they are what a training bond is worked off against, and what long-service recognition counts.

14. Type ratings

The ladder, what a rating covers, and how to pay less for one.

The ladder

Aircraft are grouped into nine classes, and each one is opened by the class before it. You cannot buy your way straight into a widebody; you walk up. Ratings are bought on Training, and they are instant, with no course length and no exam.

The spine, and the branch

The chain that leads to airline flying runs single piston, twin piston, turboprop, regional jet, narrow-body, wide-body, heavy, supersonic.

Business jets hang off turboprop and lead nowhere. Nothing requires them. They are a destination if you want to fly them, never a step on the way to something else.

What one rating covers

• The two piston classes are class ratings. One rating covers every aircraft in the class. Buy into single piston and every light single in the game is yours to fly.

• From turboprop upward they are family ratings. One rating covers a whole family: all the 737 variants together, all the A320 variants together. It does not cover a different family.

• A few families cross a class boundary. Where they do, the family belongs to the higher class, so you need the higher class open before you can buy it.

Once you hold a family rating there is no further gate on the individual variants. The level requirement is checked once, against the most accessible member of the family, and the whole family becomes flyable and purchasable at that moment.

What it costs

Two different prices, and which one you pay depends on whether the class is open yet.

This means your first rating in a class is often more expensive than your second, and it is the reason to think about which family you enter on. The unlock fee grants whichever family you bought, so enter on the one you most want to fly rather than the cheapest thing on the list.

Getting your employer to pay

If your current employer operates any aircraft in a family, that rating costs 10% of its price. The discount applies to class unlock fees too, which is where it is worth real money.

• It follows your current employer only. Resign and it is gone the same moment.

• It is judged per family, not per airline. Being employed does not discount everything, only what they actually fly.

This inverts the order you should buy in. While employed, buy the ratings your employer flies. Save the ones they do not fly for when you are between jobs, or better, for after you have signed somewhere that does fly them.

Buying a rating or being given one

Signing with an airline grants a rating on their most common entry aircraft, free. That is usually the cheapest way up a class, but it attaches a training bond, and leaving before you have flown it off costs real money. The full arithmetic is in Airlines.

The reverse is also a strategy: arrive already rated on something they fly, and no bond attaches at all, because there was nothing to train you on.

Why a rating is locked

Reasons are shown in a fixed order, so you always see the real obstacle first.

Money is checked last on purpose. Being told to come back with more cash is useless when the real problem is that you are six levels short.

Flying what you are not rated for

You cannot, and the app stops you well before the simulator ever comes into it. Charter contracts are only generated for ratings you hold, your own aircraft cannot be selected for a job, the showroom will not sell you the aircraft, and an airline roster only uses fleet types you are qualified on.

Common questions

Which rating should I buy first?

The answer flips depending on whether you are employed, which is the single most useful thing to know about ratings.

• While employed: buy ratings your employer operates. They cost a tenth of the price. This is where the real money is saved, especially on an expensive class unlock.

• While independent: you pay full price for everything, so buy only what you need to reach the next employer, and let them subsidise the rest.

The discount follows your current employer only and disappears the moment you resign, so buy before you leave, not after.

How is a rating priced?

Two prices, and which you pay depends on whether the class is already open to you.

• Your first rating in a class costs the class unlock fee. That opens the class and grants the family you bought, free.

• Any further rating in that class costs the family price alone.

If your employer flies anything in the family, either price drops to a tenth. The Training page shows the base price, the discount and what you actually pay.

Why is my first rating in a class more expensive than the next one?

Because it is buying two things: the class itself, and the family. Once the class is open, later ratings only pay for their own family.

This is worth planning around. The unlock grants whichever family you entered on, so enter on the one you most want to fly rather than the cheapest thing on the list. The fee is the same either way, and picking the cheap option throws away the free family.

Does one rating cover a whole family?

It depends where on the ladder you are.

• The two piston classes are class ratings. One covers every aircraft in the class.

• From turboprop upward, family ratings. One covers every variant of one family, and nothing outside it.

Once you hold a family rating there is no further gate on individual variants. The level requirement is checked once, against the most accessible member, and the whole family becomes flyable and purchasable at that moment. There is no waiting to grow into the larger variants.

Do I need a business jet rating to reach airliners?

No. Business jets hang off the turboprop class and lead nowhere: nothing requires them as a prerequisite.

The chain to airline flying runs single piston, twin piston, turboprop, regional jet, narrow-body, and onward. Buy business jets because you want to fly them, or because they earn well on the own-aircraft board, never as a step toward something else.

How long does training take?

No time at all. Buying a rating charges the money and grants it immediately, with no course length, no exam and no waiting period. The button says enrolling for a moment and then it is yours. There is no recurrent training or currency to maintain either.

Is it cheaper to buy a rating or let an airline train me?

Being trained is cheaper up front and carries a string. Signing grants a rating free, but it attaches a training bond, and leaving before you have flown it off costs most of what the rating was worth on top of severance.

1. Plan to stay? Take the training. Fly the bond off and it costs you nothing.

2. Plan to move on quickly? Buy the rating yourself, or better, buy it at the sponsored price while employed and then move.

3. Want the cheapest exit of all? Arrive already rated on something they fly. No rating is issued, no bond attaches, and only severance applies if you leave.

What happens if I try to fly something I am not rated for?

You never get that far. The gates sit well before the simulator does.

• Charter contracts are only generated for ratings you hold.

• Your own aircraft cannot be selected for a job.

• The showroom and the used market will not sell it to you.

• An airline roster only uses fleet types you are qualified on.

You can of course fly whatever you like in the simulator. It simply will not be a Pilot Journey flight.

A rating says it is locked and I have the money.

Reasons are shown in a fixed order, so what you see is the real obstacle rather than the most obvious one.

1. Your level is too low for that family.

2. The class is not open, because you hold nothing in the class below it.

3. You cannot afford it.

Money is checked last on purpose. Being told to come back with more cash is no use when the real problem is six levels away.

Note that a few families sit in a higher class than you might expect, because a family is classed by its largest member. Check the class in Training rather than guessing from the aircraft.

15. Standing

What moves it, what it gates, and how to recover it.

Standing

A single figure between zero and one hundred, shown as a letter grade. It is the industry’s opinion of you, and it decides which employers will talk to you and what work arrives unasked. You start at 60.

What moves it

A flight with no recorded touchdown moves nothing. There was no landing to judge, so it is neither rewarded nor punished.

What it gates

• Who will hire you. Larger carriers expect a standing to match their size. Below level thirteen, nobody asks at all.

• What work finds you. Offers that never appear on any board arrive by mail, and your standing sets how often, in what class of aircraft, and for how much.

• Whether you keep your job. A low enough standing is grounds for dismissal on its own.

The offer ladder

Three things improve together as your standing rises, and one gets worse.

The standing you earn per job falls as your standing rises. That is deliberate. A career in trouble has a fast way back, and a good one cannot farm the same climb forever. The money and the aircraft keep improving; only the reputation reward tapers.

Recovering

There is no permanent damage. The route back is the bottom of that ladder: modest work, flown cleanly, earning the most standing per job of any tier in the game.

• Fly short, easy sectors. Standing moves on the score, not on the size of the job.

• Stop cancelling. A cancelled rotation costs more standing than several good flights earn.

• Expect a quiet inbox on the way up. Below a fair standing, offers stop being generated at all, so the boards are your work until you climb out.

Losing the job

Two independent ladders can end your employment, and either one is enough.

The average only counts flights for your current employer, and needs at least 4 of them before it is used, so a rough first day is not a dismissal. Dismissal only follows a warning; it is never the first you hear about it.

Standing is shown on the Dashboard and in full on Career.

Common questions

What actually moves my standing?

Mostly flying. Every completed flight moves it by a few points, up or down, measured against a par score. Nothing moves it far in one go, by design: no single flight makes or breaks a career.

The larger movements come from how you treat commitments.

• Cancelling a flight costs more than a bad flight does, and a rostered leg costs more than a charter.

• Skipping legs past your allowance costs, repeatedly.

• Resigning costs, though it fades as you build service.

• Being dismissed costs nothing at all.

Flying an offered job well pays a bonus, and small gains come from milestones and recognition.

What is my standing actually buying me?

• Who will hire you. Larger carriers expect a standing to match their size, and it is never listed as a requirement, so it turns up as a rejection letter.

• What work finds you. Jobs that never appear on any board arrive by mail. Standing sets how often they come, what class of aircraft a client will trust you with, and how much they pay.

• Whether you keep your job. Low enough is grounds for dismissal on its own, regardless of how technically clean your flying is.

Why do good flights give me less standing than they used to?

Because the reward tapers as you climb. At the bottom of the ladder a well-flown job pays a lot of standing; at the top it pays very little.

That is deliberate, and it cuts both ways. A career in trouble has a fast route back, and a good one cannot farm the same climb forever. Everything else on that ladder improves as you rise: better pay, better aircraft, more frequent offers. Only the standing reward shrinks.

How do I recover after my standing collapses?

By flying, cleanly, and by not cancelling anything. There is no permanent damage and no hidden record; the number is all there is.

• Fly short, easy sectors. Standing moves on the score, not the size of the job, so a well-flown light aircraft leg counts as much as a widebody one.

• Stop cancelling. One cancelled rotation undoes several good flights.

• Expect a quiet inbox. Below a fair standing, offers stop being made at all, so the boards are your only work until you climb out.

Working in your favour: the standing paid per job is largest exactly when your standing is lowest.

My inbox has gone completely quiet.

Offers require all of these at once, and the last one is usually the answer.

• A minimum level and a handful of completed flights.

• No flight currently open. A job you have not flown blocks new offers.

• A standing of at least fair. Below that, nothing is generated.

Nothing is broken and nothing is lost while it is quiet. Fly the boards, bring the number back up, and the offers resume.

16. Money and fleet

The ledger, buying and selling aircraft, and your MSFS hangar.

The ledger

Every credit and every charge is written down as it happens, with your balance after it. Nothing is netted off and nothing is summarised away, so Finance always adds up to exactly the number at the top of the screen.

Where money comes from

Where it goes

There is no fuel bill, no parking, no insurance, no lease and no maintenance. Your aircraft cost money to buy and to move, and nothing to keep.

Going broke

There are no loans, no interest and no bankruptcy. Purchases are refused when you cannot afford them, so your balance can only go negative through penalties.

Negative is uncomfortable but never fatal. Rostered legs still fly, because the carrier covers your positioning, and charters departing from where you already are cost nothing to accept. You can always fly your way out.

Starting on the airline path puts you in debt on purpose. It is the training that bought your rating, it charges no interest, and a handful of jet legs clears it.

Buying new

The showroom sells anything you are rated for at a fixed price. The aircraft is delivered to the manufacturer’s delivery airport, which may be nowhere near you, so budget for a ferry on top. You can name it and choose a registration.

Buying used

A rotating batch of 8 listings, only ever in aircraft you are already rated for. Each is graded, and the grade sets both its age and its discount.

Refreshing the market replaces every listing, and so does letting it go stale. Either way the eight aircraft in front of you are gone for good. A listing you want is a decision to make now.

Two things explain a price that looks out of band. Industry news can move the whole market by up to 2500% for about a week, and listings are parked at a random airport, which is not always one the aircraft could sensibly use.

Selling

The price is anchored to what you paid, not to a market valuation, and three things come off it.

• Age, as the aircraft drifts down through the grades in real time.

• Hours you flew, up to a maximum of 35%. Hours from previous owners do not count twice; the age discount already priced those in.

• A 10% dealer cut on whatever is left.

Selling can never be profitable. The best possible outcome is 90% of what you paid, on the day you paid it. Buying to flip does not work, by construction.

Wear, and what it does not do

Aircraft lose value with age and hours, and that is the whole of it. Nothing breaks, nothing needs servicing, nothing becomes unairworthy, and neglect costs you nothing but resale. The condition on an owned aircraft is a valuation, not an airworthiness state.

Your MSFS hangar

The hangar is your statement of what you actually own in the simulator. It has no economic effect at all: it never gates a contract, changes a price, or unlocks anything. It is a filter, so the boards and the training list can show you only what you can genuinely load.

Fill it from presets for the stock fleets, tick families by hand, or use Scan MSFS.

What the scan can and cannot see

The scan reads your Community folder: add-ons you installed as files. It skips repaints so forty liveries do not become forty aircraft, and skips traffic-only packages.

It cannot see your default aircraft. MSFS streams the stock fleet and anything bought through the in-sim marketplace, so those never exist as files to be found. Use the presets for those; the scan is for payware add-ons.

Results come in two groups.

Nothing is added without you pressing add, and nothing is ever removed automatically.

The scan is unavailable on macOS, and it refuses to run when your simulator is on another PC, because the files it would read are on that other machine. Reading the wrong machine’s install would quietly give you the wrong answer, which is worse than no answer.

The aircraft encyclopaedia

Aircraft is reference only, nothing there can be bought or flown. Where a figure reads NO DATA in red, that specification has not been recorded for that type yet. It is a gap being worked through, not an error and not a statement about the aircraft. A field showing a plain not-applicable is different: that is the fact.

Common questions

Can I go bankrupt?

No. There are no loans, no interest and no bankruptcy state. Purchases are refused when you cannot afford them, so the balance can only go negative through penalties: a cancellation, a skip, severance, or a fine.

Negative is uncomfortable, never fatal. Rostered legs still fly because the carrier covers your positioning, and any charter departing where you already stand costs nothing to accept. You can always fly your way out.

What you cannot do while negative is buy aircraft or ratings, or accept a job that needs you moved somewhere first.

Why did the airline path start me in debt?

That is the training that bought your jet rating. You start type-rated and employable because somebody paid for it, and that somebody expects it back. It charges no interest, nothing bad happens while it stands, and a handful of jet legs clears it. It exists so the head start has a price.

Should I buy new or used?

Used, almost always, unless you specifically want a particular type that is not listed.

Used aircraft are graded, and the grade sets both age and discount, from a modest saving on a nearly-new airframe to a deep one on something well used. The age is already priced into what you will get back on resale, so an older aircraft is not a trap; it is simply worth less at both ends.

The catches are that the market only ever lists aircraft you are already rated for, and that listings sit wherever they happen to be, so factor a ferry into the price.

How much do I lose selling an aircraft?

At least the dealer’s cut, always. Selling on the same day you bought returns slightly less than you paid, and it only goes down from there.

The price is anchored to what you paid, not to a market valuation, minus three things:

• Age, as the aircraft drifts through the grades in real time.

• Hours you flew, up to a limit. Hours from previous owners are not counted twice.

• The dealer’s cut on whatever is left.

Buying to flip cannot work; it is arithmetically impossible. Buy aircraft to fly them.

Is there maintenance, and can my aircraft break?

No. Nothing breaks, nothing needs servicing, nothing goes out of airworthiness, and neglect costs nothing. There is no maintenance bill, no parking fee, no insurance and no lease.

Age and hours do exist, but they only affect what the aircraft is worth when you sell it. The condition shown on an owned aircraft is a valuation, not an airworthiness state, which is why it never turns red.

How does the used market refresh, and does refreshing cost me anything?

Refreshing is free in money and total in effect. It does not add listings, it replaces them, and letting the batch go stale does the same thing on its own.

So an aircraft you are considering is a decision to make now. There is no coming back to it later and no way to hold one.

One reason to refresh deliberately: the market only lists aircraft you are rated for, so after buying a new rating a refresh is what makes those types appear.

Used prices look wrong compared to last time.

Industry news can move the whole used market for about a week at a time, in either direction. A story about demand or a downturn in the paper is the cause, and it applies to listings generated while it is running. It is worth watching: a soft market is the moment to buy, and a strong one the moment to sell.

What is the MSFS hangar for, and does it affect my earnings?

It has no economic effect whatsoever. It never gates a contract, changes a price, unlocks a rating or alters a payout. Leaving it empty costs you nothing.

It is a filter. Boards and the training list can then show only aircraft you can genuinely load, which on a large charter board is the difference between usable and overwhelming. It also shapes the defaults offered during career setup.

The MSFS scan did not find my default aircraft.

It cannot. The scan reads your Community folder, which holds add-ons installed as files. The simulator streams its own stock fleet and anything bought in the in-sim marketplace, so those never exist as files for anything to find.

Use the presets for those; they cover the stock fleets in one click. The scan is for payware add-ons.

It also deliberately skips repaints, so forty liveries do not turn into forty aircraft, and skips traffic-only packages.

The Scan MSFS button is missing or refuses to run.

Two cases, both intentional.

• On macOS there is no simulator install on that machine to read, so the button is not shown.

• When your simulator is on another PC, it refuses and says so. It could read this machine’s files, but they are not the ones running your simulator, and a confident wrong answer would quietly reshape your boards.

In both cases fill the hangar with the presets and the family checkboxes instead. Nothing is lost except the convenience.

What is the difference between Detected and Probably these?

Detected means the package declared a type code that matches ours exactly. That is a certainty, so those are ticked for you.

Probably these means no code matched, but the manufacturer and model names resolved to exactly one aircraft in our catalogue. That is a good guess and not a fact, so they are left for you to confirm.

Confirm carefully. A wrong tick does not break anything, but it puts contracts on your board for an aircraft you cannot actually load. Nothing is added without you pressing add, and nothing is ever removed automatically.

Why does an aircraft page say NO DATA in red?

That specification has not been recorded for that type yet. It is a gap in the reference being worked through, not an error and not a statement about the aircraft.

A field showing a plain not-applicable is different: that is the fact. Some figures genuinely do not exist for some types, and those say so rather than showing a gap.

Nothing on Aircraft affects gameplay. It is reference only; the numbers the game actually flies on are on the contract and in the fleet.

Living with the app

17. Inbox and news

Mail that carries a decision, and what ignoring it costs.

Two channels

News is the industry paper: what is happening in the world, read-only, and nothing in it needs an answer. Inbox is addressed to you, and some of it carries a decision that exists nowhere else in the app.

How it arrives

• News prints on its own schedule, spaced out over the hours, no more than 8 pieces a day.

• Mail that confirms something you did, or that is genuinely urgent, arrives at once. Everything else is held back and trickled in, so a single flight does not produce eight letters.

Restarting the app does not produce more news. The pacing is remembered between sessions and the daily limit counts real hours, not launches. Equally, coming back after a week away does not bury you: you get one article, then the normal rhythm.

Things expire

A reward you did not claim is a reward you lost. Bonus mail credits the money when you press the button in it, not when it arrives. If it expires unopened, nothing is paid. You get a warning about an hour before anything with an action on it runs out.

Mail that actually does something

Signing with anyone archives every other open offer. They are archived rather than deleted, so you can still read who was asking, but they can no longer be accepted.

Ignoring the dismissal letter

It does not take effect until you acknowledge it, so leaving it unopened does technically keep you employed until it expires. It does not help. The performance that produced it is still on the record, and the letter simply comes back.

Why the inbox goes quiet

Offers are only generated when all of these hold.

• You are at least level 2.

• You have completed at least 3 flights.

• You have no flight open right now.

• Your standing is at least fair. Below that, nothing is offered at all, and the boards are your only work until you climb back.

A hand-picked job also needs an aircraft you are rated on that can actually make the distance with reserve. If nothing in your licence fits, the job is passed over rather than downgraded.

Chains

Some mail is the second half of something you already read in the paper.

• Recruiting. A carrier a step above you announces it is hiring; a couple of hours later, if you qualify, an approach lands in your inbox with a signing bonus attached.

• Trouble at your employer. A story about your airline struggling is followed by a letter, but only once your current block is finished, and only if you are still there.

Fines

Repeating the same discipline finding on rostered flights builds a strike of that kind. A clean flight takes one back off. Below the third strike you get a written warning; from the third, a fine, growing with each strike to a ceiling of $6,000.

Only rostered flights count. Charter work never builds strikes, and a check you have switched off in Settings cannot build one either.

The investment letter

Somebody will eventually write to you with an opportunity. It is a scam. Investing costs $10,000, returns nothing, and is followed some hours later by a letter from the police.

Who writes to you

Mail comes from departments, and the person sitting at each desk is worked out when the letter is sent. Some desks belong to your employer and re-staff when you change jobs; others are fixed for your whole career. Once a letter has been delivered, its author, their photograph and its text are frozen, so an old letter always reads the way it did the day it arrived.

Common questions

An offer expired before I opened it. Can I get it back?

No. Everything in your inbox has a lifetime, a few days for news and about a week for mail, and once it passes the item is closed. Nothing is applied, nothing is charged, and there is no way to reopen it.

You do get a warning about an hour before anything with an action on it runs out, so an expiry is usually a missed notification rather than a surprise.

Nothing is truly lost: a carrier that wanted you once will approach you again, and the hiring board is always there.

I got a bonus letter but the money never arrived.

The letter is the offer; the button inside it is the payment. Reward mail credits the money when you press it, not when it arrives.

So an unclaimed reward that expires is a reward you did not take. Open reward mail when you see it and press the button.

I signed with a carrier and all my other offers disappeared.

Signing closes every other open offer, which is what any of those carriers would do on hearing you had taken a job elsewhere. They are archived rather than deleted, so you can still read who was asking and on what terms, but they can no longer be accepted. If you resign later, you apply again through the hiring board.

My airline is threatening to fire me. What do I have to fix?

Your recent average has dropped below what they expect. It looks at your last few flights for this employer only, and needs a handful of them before it counts at all.

Fix it by flying clean legs. As older flights fall out of the window the average recovers, so a few good sectors is genuinely enough. You do not have to be perfect, only better than the threshold.

There is a second, independent route to dismissal through your standing, so check that too if the flying itself looks fine. Dismissal only ever follows a warning.

If I never open the dismissal letter, do I keep my job?

Technically yes, until it expires. The effect only lands when you acknowledge it, so an unopened letter leaves you employed.

It does not help. The performance that produced it is still on the record, so the letter simply comes back. Fixing the flying is the only actual escape.

Does restarting the app bring me more news?

No. The pacing is remembered between sessions and the daily limit counts real hours rather than launches, so relaunching gains nothing.

The same design protects you the other way: coming back after a week away does not bury you in a backlog. You get one article and then the normal rhythm.

Someone wrote to me with an investment opportunity. Should I take it?

No. It is a scam, and it is meant to look exactly as tempting as it does. Investing takes the money, returns nothing, and is followed some hours later by a letter from the police confirming what happened. It only ever appears when you have enough on hand to lose, which is part of the joke.

Why does the same person keep writing, and why did they change when I switched jobs?

Mail comes from departments, and each desk has somebody sitting at it. Some desks belong to your employer and re-staff when you change jobs, which is why your correspondents changed. Others are outside any airline and stay with you for the whole career.

Once a letter is sent, its author, their photograph and its text are frozen, so an old letter always reads the way it did the day it arrived even if that person has since moved on.

How do I get the hand-picked jobs to start arriving?

They are offers rather than listings, so somebody has to think of you. All of these have to hold.

• A minimum level, and a few completed flights behind you.

• A standing of at least fair. Below that none are generated, and above it both the frequency and the quality rise.

• An aircraft you are rated on that can make the distance with reserve to spare. If nothing fits, the job is passed over rather than offered in something unsuitable.

A client asks when they need the aeroplane, so one can land while you are already flying. The request keeps for several days; you simply cannot take it on until the current job is closed out.

Which job you are sent leans towards routes you have never flown, though a client who was happy with you does sometimes ask for the same trip again. After one arrives it goes quiet for a while: about a week, or sooner if you have been flying a lot in the meantime.

They pay well above board rates, cover your positioning, and pay a bonus for flying them well. Check Inbox rather than the boards; they never appear there.

18. Settings and backups

Every setting, career backup and restore, and updates.

Settings

Eight panels down the left. There is no save button; every change applies the moment you make it.

The settings worth knowing about

• Auto-start flight and Auto-complete on parking, both off by default. The manual buttons keep working either way.

• Flight scoring. Six switches, all on. Turning one off removes it from the score and from your employer’s view of you. Landing and on-time are not switchable.

• Keep display awake during flight, off by default, and only active once you are actually airborne. Browsing the boards uses your normal power settings.

• Units. Altitude affects the low-level readouts only; flight levels stay flight levels. Temperature affects decoded weather; a raw report is always in its original units.

• Desktop notifications are only sent when the app is in the background. A burst arriving at once is folded into a single banner. The in-app toasts cannot be switched off, only shortened or made permanent.

Backups you did not ask for

Your career is copied automatically at three moments.

The three kinds rotate separately, keeping the newest few of each, so a run of routine copies can never push out the one taken before an upgrade.

Routine backups count flights rather than days, because flights are what you would be sorry to lose.

Backing up and restoring by hand

Settings → Danger zone writes your whole career to one file, and reads one back. The file holds everything: pilot, licences, fleet, logbook, mail, finances, and the boards as they stand.

1. Back up career and choose where to save it.

2. To restore, Choose a file. You are shown whose career is inside it, their level, hours, balance and when it was saved, before anything is touched.

3. Confirm by typing RESTORE. The app takes a copy of your current career first, swaps the file, and restarts itself.

You cannot restore while airborne. Finish or cancel the flight first.

Taking your logbook to another tracker

A career backup is for this app alone. To hand your flights to a tracker like SimToolkitPro or Volanta, or to a spreadsheet, use the Export button at the top of Logbook. It writes every completed flight to one file and asks where to put it.

Each row carries the date, flight number, operator, type and registration, both airports by ICAO, IATA and name, off and on blocks in UTC, block time both as hours and as plain minutes, distance, landing rate, touchdown g, fuel burned, score, payout and your notes.

Trackers do not agree on a common logbook format, so most ask you to match the columns yourself the first time you import. The headings are written out in full for exactly that moment: From ICAO, Block Time, Landing Rate (fpm). Match them once and the tracker remembers.

Times are UTC throughout, whatever you have set under Units and display. If an importer asks which zone the file is in, the answer is UTC.

Moving to another computer

1. Back up your career on the old machine.

2. Deactivate the licence in Settings → Account, which frees the slot.

3. Install and activate on the new machine.

4. Restore the file there.

Why a backup file might be refused

A career file is sealed, and it is checked against itself before it is allowed in. This is not a security measure, it is there to stop an edited file quietly becoming your save.

Only rules the app itself guarantees on every write are enforced, because a false refusal would lock you out of your own career.

If your career will not open

On startup, a career file damaged in a way the app recognises is replaced from the newest usable backup, and you are told it happened rather than being left to wonder. The unreadable file is kept, never deleted.

That is the only case where anything is rolled back. Every other startup failure stops with an error, because silently rewinding your career would hide a problem and cost you progress.

Reset career

Settings → Danger zone, confirmed by typing RESET.

Gone

• Pilot, level, miles, standing, money

• Every licence and rating

• Your employer and your roster

• Your aircraft and the used market

• Boards, ledger, logbook, career history

• The whole inbox, including anything queued

Kept

• Every setting, including units, theme and sim setup

• Your SimBrief ID and your hangar

• The licence on this device

• Every automatic backup

• Any career file you exported

Reset writes the career out before it clears it, as an ordinary career file in your backups folder. The path is shown once the reset finishes, and Restore career takes that file like any other. The newest three are kept, so resetting four times does drop the first one.

It is still the one action with no undo inside the game. If the career mattered, back it up somewhere of your own choosing as well.

Updates

Updates download in the background and install the next time you quit. Nothing is asked of you. Settings → Account shows the version, when it last checked, what is new, and a button to restart now.

Occasionally an update matters enough that the app asks you to take it before playing on, with the reason stated. Even then it never traps you: there is always a way past for this session, and it will never interrupt a flight. Mid-flight it collapses to a line saying it will install after you land.

Your career, your logbook and your backups are untouched by an update. Only the program is replaced.

Common questions

Can I export my flights to Volanta, SimToolkitPro or another tracker?

Yes. Logbook → Export writes every completed flight to one file. Pick** CSV** for a tracker or a spreadsheet, or JSON if you want everything untouched for an archive or your own script.

1. Open Logbook and press Export, top right.

2. Choose CSV. Save it somewhere you will find it again.

3. In the tracker, open its own import screen. In Volanta that is the data import and export page; SimToolkitPro takes a logbook file the same way.

4. Match the columns when it asks. The headings say what they are, so From ICAO goes to departure, Block Time to block time, and so on. Most trackers remember the mapping after the first import.

Every flight brings its date, flight number, operator, type and registration, both airports by ICAO, IATA and name, off and on blocks, block time, distance, landing rate, touchdown g, fuel burned, score, payout and your notes.

• All times are UTC, whatever you picked under Units and display. Tell the importer that if it asks.

• Block time appears twice, as hours and minutes for reading and as plain minutes for importers that want a number.

• It is a copy, not a move. Exporting changes nothing in your logbook, and you can do it as often as you like.

No tracker publishes a fixed logbook format, which is why the file is broad and plainly labelled rather than shaped for one of them. Anything that reads a CSV can take it, including a spreadsheet if you would rather keep your own records.

This is a different thing from a career backup. The backup in Settings → Danger zone is for restoring this app; the export is for getting your flying out of it.

When does the game back my career up on its own?

Three moments, and it keeps the newest few of each kind separately.

• Routinely, every five completed flights, and at least every couple of weeks even if you are not flying.

• Before an upgrade that has to change how your career is stored.

• Before a restore, so overwriting your career always leaves the old one recoverable.

Keeping the kinds separate matters: a run of routine copies can never push out the one taken before an upgrade, which is exactly the copy you would want if an upgrade went wrong.

It counts flights rather than days because flights are what you would be sorry to lose.

How do I move my career to another computer?

1. On the old machine, Settings → Danger zone → Back up career. Put the file somewhere you can reach from the new machine.

2. Still on the old machine, Settings → Account → Licence, and deactivate. This frees the slot; skipping it is the usual reason activation fails on the new machine.

3. Install and activate on the new machine.

4. Settings → Danger zone, choose the file, and confirm. The app restarts into your career.

My career file will not restore.

The file is checked against itself before it is allowed in. Four ways it can fail.

• Changed since export. Something in the file was altered after it was written.

• Failed its consistency check. The contents contradict themselves: the ledger does not add up to the balance, or the level does not match the miles. This is what an edited career looks like.

• Saved by a newer version. Update the app and try again; this build does not know how to read it yet.

• Damaged. Corrupted rather than edited, usually a bad copy or a failing drive.

Only rules the app guarantees on every single write are enforced, because a false refusal would lock you out of your own career.

Can I restore a backup while a flight is open?

Not while you are airborne; it is refused and says so. Land, or cancel the flight, then restore. Restoring replaces the whole career and relaunches the app, so a flight in progress would be left in an impossible state.

What exactly does Reset career destroy?

Everything about your pilot: level, miles, standing, money, licences, employer, roster, aircraft, boards, ledger, logbook, career history, and the whole inbox.

It keeps everything about the installation: every setting including units, theme and your simulator setup, your SimBrief ID, your MSFS hangar, the licence on this device, every automatic backup, and any career file you exported.

It saves the career before it clears it. When the reset finishes you are shown where the file went, and Restore career reads it back like any file you exported yourself. The newest three of these are kept.

I reset my career by mistake. Can I get it back?

Usually yes. Reset writes your career out before clearing it, so there is a file waiting for you in the backups folder.

1. Go to Settings → Danger zone → Restore career and choose a file.

2. Open the backups folder beside your career and pick the newest before-reset file. You are shown whose career is inside before anything is touched.

3. Confirm by typing RESTORE. The app swaps it in and restarts.

The path is on screen the moment the reset finishes, which is the easiest time to note it. If you missed it, the folder is the same one the app names when it cannot open your career.

• Only the newest three are kept. Resetting four times pushes the first one out.

• It can be missing. If there was no career yet, or writing the file failed, the reset says so rather than pretending otherwise.

The app said it restored a backup when I started it.

Your career file was damaged in a way the app recognises, so it went back to the newest usable backup and told you rather than leaving you to notice on your own. The unreadable file is kept, never deleted, in case it can be salvaged later.

You may have lost progress back to that backup, which is at most a few flights. That is the only case where anything is ever rolled back automatically: every other startup failure stops with an error instead, because silently rewinding a career would hide a problem and cost you work.

How do updates install, and can one stop me playing?

Normally you never see one. Updates download in the background and install the next time you quit. Settings → Account shows the version, what is new, and a button to restart now if you would rather not wait.

Occasionally one matters enough that the app asks you to take it before playing on, with the reason stated. Even then it will not trap you: there is always a way past for the session, and it never interrupts a flight. Mid-flight it collapses to a line saying it will install after you land.

Your career, logbook and backups are untouched. Only the program is replaced.

Which settings actually change how I am scored?

Only the Flight scoring switches under Settings → Simulator. Six of them, all on by default: seatbelt sign, beacon, taxi speed, overspeed and stall warnings, and operating restrictions.

Switching one off removes it completely, from the score and from your employer’s view of you, so it can no longer cost points or build toward a fine.

Landing rate and on-time arrival have no switch. Nothing else in Settings affects scoring: units, theme and notifications change only what you see.

19. Troubleshooting

Symptoms, where to look, and what is not actually broken.

Start here

Most problems are one of three things: the simulator is not sending anything yet, you are not where the app expects you to be, or a board is showing you something it generated earlier. Find the symptom below.

Connection

Buttons that will not press

Boards and progression

Scoring

What you can capture

• The status pill in the title bar. Hover it: status, transport, and how long ago the last frame arrived. If that number climbs, data has stopped.

• The bridge window on your sim PC, if you use one. It says which half of the link is working, and its log file records everything with the network addresses it found at startup.

• Diagnostics in Debug, on builds that have it: version, database contents and a responsiveness measurement.

Things that are not broken

• NO DATA on an aircraft page. That specification has not been recorded for that type yet.

• An airworthy badge that never changes. There is no maintenance model, so it never will.

• An accepted contract past its deadline. Deadlines apply to the offer, not to you.

• Career hours that disagree with the logbook. They count different things. The logbook is the honest one.

• A used aircraft parked somewhere it could never take off from. Listings are placed without checking the runway.

Still stuck

Report a problem from Help. Say what you expected, what happened, and whether the simulator is on this machine or another one; that last detail settles half of all connection reports on its own.

If you are on the point of resetting your career to fix something, export it first from Settings, Danger zone. A reset takes no backup of its own.

Elsewhere

• SimBrief for flight planning. A free account, and the source of every schedule figure in the app.

• OurAirports, where the airport and runway reference comes from.

Common questions

What should I include when I report a problem?

Four things settle most reports on their own.

• Where the simulator is running: the same machine as Pilot Journey, or another one. This alone explains half of all connection reports.

• What you expected and what happened, in that order.

• What the status pill said. Hover it in the title bar; it reports the transport in use and how long ago the last frame arrived.

• The bridge log, if you use one. It records the network addresses it found at startup, which is usually the answer.

Should I reset my career to fix a problem?

Almost never, and not before exporting. A reset destroys your pilot and takes no backup of its own, so it is the most expensive thing you can try and rarely the thing that helps.

Most of what looks like a broken career is not one.

• An empty or stale board wants a refresh.

• A stuck roster wants a different base or aircraft in the preferences.

• A silent inbox is usually your standing, not a fault.

If you do reset, back up first from Settings → Danger zone. A career file can always be restored; a reset one cannot.

Is this a bug or is it meant to work like that?

These are all working as intended, and all get reported regularly.

• A board countdown that reaches zero and does nothing.

• An accepted contract still flyable long past its deadline.

• Pay that does not rise when you level up.

• A rank title that changes when you resign.

• Career hours that disagree with the logbook.

• An airworthy badge that never changes.

• NO DATA on an aircraft specification.

• A used aircraft parked at a field it could never take off from.

Each has its own entry in the chapter it belongs to, with the reasoning.