Something has clicked for me with Microsoft’s ATR airliner and while I prepare for my take on a review of this airliner for the sim, my first ever review of an airliner, I thought I’d share some of the flights that I’ve been doing together with some of the liveries that I’ve downloaded to make them happen.

Liverpool, UK to Dublin, Ireland

With some Irish heritage and the Shamrock as my longstanding ‘callsign,’ I just had to do an Aer Lingus ATR flight! And so that’s exactly what I did.

I used the Aer Lingus EI-FAT livery from flightsim.to and setup a semi realistic flight route from EGGP Liverpool Airport (part of the UK World Update pack) over to EIDW Dublin International.

The departure was quite fun thanks to some low clouds, nearby rainstorms, and brilliant sunlight streaking in the cracks between them. I also really like the scenery at and around the Liverpool airport including the yellow submarine art installation.

Things were pretty quiet in the transition across the Irish sea. Then it was all about the approach into Dublin. Two things happened here. First, I was too high. Descending in the ATR takes sometime and not having air brakes (the propellers do that job) can be problematic for rapid descents which MSFS ATC likes to anticipate.

That left me too high on the approach and that combined with some haze and fog made my approach rapidly turn into a missed approach. I did a go around and by the time I was back on approach again the weather had changed and I had a much clearer visual of the runway.

Queenstown, New Zealand to Christchurch, New Zealand

This whole flight felt magical to me. Armed with the Air New Zealand wave and fern livery for the ATR, I decided I’d do a flight on the south island going from Queenstown (a New Zealand World Update airport) over to Christchurch New Zealand. This whole route was incredible with some impressive visuals on the departure out of Queenstown with mountains and hills on all sides.

The climb took me over some unbelievably rugged and scenic terrain including a waypoint that had me overfly the Aoraki/Mount Cook National Park region. Then our route turned us to the east and towards Christchurch. The scenery changed in two dramatic ways as we left the mountains and were now overflying flat agricultural lands. But not only as thick clouds and rain were ahead.

Miraculously, the route we had took us around all of the major cloud formations and gave us an impressively clear view into Christchurch airport. The scenery below and the cloudscapes above were so scenic and I had my descent into this airport managed extremely well.

Dawson City to Inuvik with Canada North

I learned the other day that one of the smaller airlines in Canada, Canada North. It’s an Inuit owned airline that serves primarily the northern territories of Canada with some routes that connect with the southern cities.

One of the aircraft that they use? The ATR 42! I ended up with a route that may not have been completely accurate but one that was fun to do anyways. I set out from a Canadian World Update airport, CYDA Dawson City and then flew a route that took me north to the airport, CYEV, located near the remote town of Inuvik, Northwest Territories.

The scenery here is not great and it got worse the further I flew north. Still, the cool Canada North livery and the remote nature of the route was fun to fly anyways.

Glasgow to Kirkwal

For this flight, I picked this spectacularly tartan adorned Logan Air livery from flightsim.to and picked an authentic route (as best as I can tell). The route departs from Glasgow and heads north up to Kirkwall – the largest town in the Orkney archipelago.

This was a straightforward flight with just a few waypoints and some Scottish weather with low lying haze and fog with a moody sunset as we touched down at Kirkwall. It was not my best landing but still one to walk away from!

Paderborn to Prague

This flight really made me a believer in high quality airport scenery in a way that has never happened for me before. My departure airport was Paderborn, a free but high quality Aerosoft airport scenery, that features a ton of beautifully rendered buildings. It even has animated people in the waiting/boarding area that walk around. Talk about immersion!

After waiting for another player flown ATR to take off, I was up into the skies with my own aircraft sporting the Lufthansa Regional D-ANFI scheme available on flightsim.to.

Calm weather, clear skies, and a near endless array of scenic European countryside stretched out to the horizon.

Before too long the sun had set and I was on final approach to Prague and LKPR Václav Havel Airport another nicely detailed airport that I have. A terrific flight with a nice quiet ending. Spectacular!

Lots of adventure

As I said in my introduction of this Flight Journal, I’ve really clicked with the ATR and flying this type of aircraft seems to be exactly what I needed to get into airliners in a slightly more serious way. I’m still keeping things fun and fast on each of these journeys but at the same time I’m seeking out realistic routes where possible and inputting the SIDS, the STARS and all of the various waypoints to make these operations more or less authentic… if not fully accurate.

The ATR lets you go into big airports as well as small ones and that really appeals to my desire to have a breadth of experiences. A full review of this aircraft is due soon but in the meantime I wanted to share several of my journeys with it. I hope you’ve enjoyed and that it inspires you to fly your own!