Some news from the folks at Just Flight has just come out with updates on their 146 Professional airliner for Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as a new video and a release date for the Fokker F28 Fellowship for the same sim. Let’s have a look!

New features for the 146

Just Flight’s 146 Professional, simulating multiple variants of the BAe 146 four engine airliner, is something of a sleeper hit with a lot of sim pilots enjoying the airliner while others remain unaware of it. It’s not an airplane I own currently but it’s definitely worth a close look and that might be doubly true thanks to some upcoming improvements and additions.

Some of the new features that are being worked on are located in the EFB. A new random payload button will select a random passenger and cargo load while a new pushback menu lets you connect, disconnect, and control the direction that the tug pushes your airplane in. A virtual keyboard has also been added to the EFB for Xbox players so that they can input values as needed.

That’s not all as a highly requested new feature is also coming to the 146 – failures simulation!

A Failures menu allows you to control over 80 different system and component failures, with options to either fail them instantly or arm them to fail after a specific period of time. There is also a Random Failures mode which will automatically trigger random failures, based on the selected probability (high, low etc).

The system sounds impressive letting you train on specific failures or letting random chance throw a potential failure your way as your flight is progressing. Very interesting to see!

Finally, JustFlight have also updated us on some other features that are coming along. The UNS-1 FMS still needs a bit of work to be done but it has been put through its paces and can handle SIDS, STARS, and holds. A manual for the FMS will be released prior to the future update that adds this feature.

More weather radar functionality is also coming too with Just Flight making use of SDK updates to improve the capabilities. More details are coming out about that later!

Read the full update here.

Fokker F28 progress and release

Meanwhile, Just Flight are finishing up work on another Microsoft Flight Simulator airliner. This is the Fokker F28 Fellowship, a late 1960’s regional jet liner. The latest developer video shows us the passenger cabin that includes some really cool interactivity including door opening, cabin light controls, stairway light controls and even music!

The other news relates to a question on release dates in the comments of the above video where a relatively clear answer was given.

It’ll be released within the next month we hope. F100 updates a bit later in the summer potentially.

JustFlight

Sounds like the F28 is on final approach and we’re looking at a release sometime in the next several weeks. Great news indeed! Then we’ll be looking towards updates on the follow-up Fokker F100 – a stretched and modernized F28. Stay tuned for more!