Time to do another Flight Journal and this time it’s a flight I did recently (a couple of patches ago now) in the Cessna Citation Latitude and Microsoft Flight Simulator. This time I fly between two very interesting airports. Let’s have a look!

Paderborn Airport

Aerosoft’s first airport for Microsoft Flight Simulator came out in August and it’s been in the Microsoft Marketplace for the low price of free. I am talking about (EDLP) Paderborn/Lippstadt airport located in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Paderborn/Lippstadt is home base for the Aerosoft company and where they got their start doing simulation work. Releasing it for free is a nice gesture but it also acts as a flagship and an example of the kind of scenery work that they are putting into Microsoft Flight Simulator.

Looking around the airport, there’s a great many details and nice touches that you get from something hand made and done by people who have plenty of experience building airports for Flight Simulator. If you like flying in Germany or having cool scenery to back up your globetrotting flights, Paderborn/Lippstadt is a good one and its small enough to feel comfortable for GA aircraft and big enough for airliners so it really is a good option.

I selected this airport as my starting destination. My end point? Innsbruk Airport (LOWI) located in western Austria. This airport has been the subject of many scenery packs over the years and is one of the included high detail airports that came from the Asobo team at Microsoft – such was the recognition of this airport. Innsbruk is located in the valley between mountain ranges and is highly scenic. It was about time that I flew in there myself!

For this flight I picked the Cessna Citation Latitude. This is an aircraft that I love the internal and external aesthetic of but one that has been plagued by some bugs and various issues since its release in the Premium Deluxe edition of Flight Simulator. I wanted to see if it had improved and … it had not. On this flight, my flight plan failed to load in. Entering the plan manually also failed with the input screen stuck on the airport entry point. I’m told that this may have been fixed since I did this flight so look for future Cessna Citation Latitude flight journal series in the future. No matter though. I’m used to navigating by sight and compass in WWI and WWII aircraft in IL-2 and DCS World and the VFR map in Microsoft Flight Simulator got me the rest of the way.

Also previously broken was the autopilot system which now appears to behave at least in the altitude, heading and vertical speed modes. Good enough!

Climbing out of Padderborn, I noted how flat this area of Germany is. Although there’s clearly some relief around the rivers that have cut a path through the surrounding land, the rest of the area is flat and filled with farmers fields. In the low light of the late November sun, it took on a very peaceful and cool nature. Something that I’ve been appreciation as we’ve moved from the bright sun and brilliant colours of the summer when I did my first flights.

That flat terrain stayed very much the theme for most of the flight but mountains did continue to rise in the distance. Flat gave way to scenic mountain ranges as we approached the German-Austria border. This is truly a spectacular area to fly in and I highly recommend it for sight seeing.

With the sun now setting, I hand flew (and absolutely did not follow any sort of procedures) a landing into Innsbruk while appreciating both the mountains and the setting sun. Once landed I taxied to the apron so I could appreciate the detail work on the Innsbruk airport. Here, Asobo has put in quite a few details around the airport.

Although Orbx sells their own version of the airport that includes surrounding scenery (buildings in the case of MSFS), the basic version that Asobo offers up seems good enough for basic flying in and out. Perhaps I’ll do a comparison at some point.

I hope you enjoyed this latest entry in my flight journal series. Check out the screenshots below to get a good look at Padderborn, Innsbruk, and the Cessna Citation Latitude. I’ll be flying this one again soon to see how it’s progressed!

Screenshots

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