After my experience with the ATR and getting into the swing of airliner flying, I’ve ventured out into some other aircraft including the FSS E170 and E175. For this flight I flew from Nice, France up to Paris, France with the Air France Hop livery for the E170. Here’s how that went and some more additional thoughts on the E170/175 from Flight Sim Studio Ag. Let’s hop (!) on over to the story telling….sorry, couldn’t resist.

Scenery considerations

Whenever I pick flights in Microsoft Flight Simulator, I’m often looking for locations that I have some added scenery for. Generic airports are fine but airports with detailed scenery really do make the difference and so World Update IV: France & Benelux includes a nicely detailed Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur (LFMN).

That’s not the only consideration as nearby city of Nice and the whole Azure Coast area is incredibly scenic with the foothills for the Alps to the north, the Mediterranean to the south, and some spectacular city and scenic imagery in between. And to continue with my puns… it really is nice…err Nice!

Away we go

Departing from Runway 04R the E170 quickly built speed and became airborne without too much effort. The airplane generally has a good feeling of performance I’ve found and so accelerating and climbing out feels relatively easy to manage.

Soon the autopilot was on and it was time to check out the departure route… and the scenery. Below was Nice and ahead was the Alps including the nearly 68,000 hectare Parc National Mercantour.

As we climbed in steps we crossed over some snowier sections of the mountain range (by live weather) before clearing both some cloud and snow for greener pastures and bluer skies. The transition between mountain range and flat land I always find interesting and this was no less star with sharp hills and mountains now behind us an plenty of agricultural land ahead.

Soon Paris would appear ahead and, after a challenging descent where the built in ATC cleared the descent a bit later than I would have liked, I got myself lined up on and successfully landed on runway 09L at Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (LFPG). Things happen faster in the E170 than they do in the ATR and so some quick thinking and troubleshooting at different stages of flight, for a still newbie airliner fan, requires some work.

A few E170/175 challenges

All of the flights that I’ve done so far with the E170 and E175 have been fun which has made the cost of ownership worthwhile. But there are rough edges, associated with the early access model, that this type sports.

Two stood out to me on this flight. The first is the autopilot which seemed to disengage more than it had on previous routes. This was problematic as my attention was elsewhere and then suddenly the aircraft had disengaged the autopilot and was wandering. This happened a couple of times when I was monitoring the AP, not touching a control and not manipulating anything, and it still did it.

The other is sounds. Having now flown on an E190 recently, I can confirm that the sounds for this jet are ok but they don’t feel fully implemented or tuned. One of the ways that this stood out on this flight was when I reached a cruise altitude and the auto-throttle dropped back. The sounds of the engines dropped off – far more than they should have. To the point where I was concerned that we had lost engines for some reason. But no, they were happily churning away… they were just quiet.

Again, this is a project underway and these issues are worthy of mention without any negative hypebole about the project. Should issues like this persist to the official release sometime further on down the road, I’d find fault with them. As it is, I’m hopeful we’ll see lots of improvements as it progresses along.

It’s a fun jet, flying on fun routes, and that’s working for me!