Continuing my ‘year of the airliner’ project, this next Flight Journal piece has me recounting my tale of picking up the FlyByWire A32x and learning as much about it as I can on my first few flights. I make mistakes but I manage to make it work. Here’s how the learning process is going so far!

The FlyByWire A320?

For those unaware of the FlyByWire A320neo, let me provide a tiny overview of what this project is all about.

When Microsoft Flight Simulator launched in the middle of 2020, simmers were pleased that it was coming with a few airliners right out of the gate but then were disappointed when those airliners didn’t meet the high fidelity standards that some had come to expect from other sims.

X-Plane’s Zibo 737 project, for example, was held up as an example of the extreme levels of detail possible and of course many payware examples were touted too. But it was Zibo in particular was enticing because it was a freeware community project. Enter FlyByWire!

Following a model roughly similar to that of the Zibo Project, FlyByWire brought together programmers, engineers, A320 pilots, enthusiasts, and then ultimately achieved broad support and interest from around the sim world. Building on the base Asobo A320neo and then packing thousands of changes and upgrades in, FlyByWire has evolved into a significant freeware developer force. Their A320neo project has evolved significantly from its early days and recent changes include an in-depth simulation of the hydraulics and fuel systems and an overhaul of the interior cockpit lighting. Just a couple of examples of the work being done. FlyByWire are also tackling their own aircraft project, the Airbus A380 and are providing support to other freeware developers.

If you own any version of Microsoft Flight Simulator, you can get the latest FlyByWire A32nx for free through their installer.

And now its my turn to see what happens when I take to the skies in the A32nx.

Flying ITA from Palmero to Rome

Italy’s new flag carrier after the collapse of Alitalia is called ITA and the re-branded aircraft are looking spectacular with a deep blue livery and Italian flag on the rudder. I saw a bunch of them on a recent trip to that country.

My departing airport was Palmero (LICJ), one of the airports included in the Italy World Update, a very scenic place to take-off from and my destination was Rome Fiumicino (LIRF). A common route for ITA A320s to fly.

FlyByWire have spent a ton of time building out an extensive array of features into the A32nx project and that includes their own custom EFB system. The EFB, like the one on the ATR and on the FSS E-Jets, lets you choose aircraft state which means you can plug-in a ready for pushback or ready for taxi option letting you skip over some of the tedious steps and getting you into a flying position as quickly as possible. Some of you love that, at the moment I’m more anxious to get into the air and on the way so this is great. The EFB also lets you control all kinds of neat features like passenger and cargo loading, fuel trucks, jetways, pushback, and more.

You can also load in a flight plan from SimBrief here or make use of the built in MSFS flight planner. Great options to have especially with my ‘fast and fun’ airliner approach.

Takeoff went reasonably quickly and before too long I was accelerating away. The knowledge that I thought I had on A320 operation (from my cross country journey a couple of years back) quickly proved to be fleeting as I fiddled with the autopilot system for quite a while. On this flight I never fully had the system working and so I hand flew part of it and fiddle with the autopilot the other part of the time. In subsequent flights I was able to make things work just fine so I don’t know what I was doing here – the pilot was surely the problem.

I was able to climb out and follow the assigned waypoints, clearing a couple of discontinuities along the way, and reaching Rome as the sun set.

My descent into the pattern came too quickly and I found myself a little lower than expected over the Italian countryside. I managed to get clearance to land at Rome Fiumicino on runway 16L. Although not the smoothest of landings, it was still a decent one and I was able to bring the plane in safely to my assigned parking space.

It was a rough first flight but an enjoyable one all the same! And that prompted me to fly it more… a lot more!

JetBlue in the dark blue between New York and Chicago

Another sunset flight, this time I picked a JetBlue livery and flew the A320neo from New York’s JFK airport to Chicago O’Hare – a frequent route for the carrier.

This second flight went much more smoothly. I was a bit more prepared for the autopilot quirks and had more settings dialed in before takeoff so that when it came time to turn over control I was on the way and pressing the right buttons.

I learned that the expedite button ensures that the aircraft responds quickly to commanded altitude changes which is nice when ATC is yelling at you to get going with the change already. Plus the A320neo seems to have more than enough engine power to blast its way up to whatever altitude you need it to go.

I conducted the final approach into O’Hare at night and although I thought I had approach mode and ILS configured correctly I’m not actually sure I was getting the correct indications. Something I learned more about on subsequent flights. This is why I fly!

Ibiza to Madrid

Enough with the low light and sunsets, this next flight was done in broad daylight flying a route between Ibiza, one of the Balearic islands in the Spanish archipelago, up to Madrid again mimicking a real life route flown by Iberia.

This was my most successful flight yet with the aircraft and pilot performing more or less flawlessly and following the route with a great degree of success. I did descend a bit too early but otherwise had a great line-up on the runway at Madrid and brought it in for a landing.

I’m starting to understand the A320neo a bit more each time I do a flight in it and FlyByWire’s deeper modeling definitely shows over the base version. I admittedly don’t yet have a full appreciation for what they’ve done as I’m not experienced as a virtual airline pilot. But this is the journey that I’m on right now and I have to say that the experience on the whole is excellent, a few bugs with ATC and ground routing aside, and the price of free makes it all the more worthwhile to check out.

Wizz Air from Lublin to Prague

Following that Iberia flight, I was encouraged again to take the A32nx out and this ended up being even smoother than my last flight. An indication that some things are starting to click.

A beautiful, and slightly mood, departure from Lublin, Poland (with Drzewiecki Design’s EPLB Lublin from the Orbx store) with my destination being Václav Havel Airport (LKPR) in Prague.

This is a real life route flown by Wizz Air, a Hungarian multinational ultra low-cost carrier, that frequently flies routes from Lublin in Poland. The scenery even features its own Wizz Air A320 baked in.

As I said at the top, this couldn’t have been a smoother flight with little in the way of weather or flight planning trouble. The A320 flew the route beautifully with no autopilot hiccups and my arrival into Václav Havel Airport went great. A smooth landing and an easy taxi to the gate.

I was feeling very confident at this point… maybe too confident.

Spirit from Houston to Oaklahoma

For the last flight I want to document I want to highlight what happens when you start to get a little confident and then you realize that you still don’t know a lot. Its a good example of what happens when do you don’t know what you don’t know but you know a little bit and feel like you’ve got things under control.

This flight went from Houston’s William P. Hobby airport (got to make use of that recently purchased scenery) flying a Spirit A320. I wasn’t able to find a real world route flown by Spirit like the one I was about to embark on but it was close enough so I went for it. My destination was Will Rogers World Airport which I recently got some scenery for as well (its an addiction) during the iniBuilds sale several weeks ago. I wanted to connect the two!

Taxi, takeoff, and cruise went really well. I’ve been relying on importing the flight plan from the Microsoft Flight Simulator built in planner and that has generally been a good thing. Most of my flights have gone well working this way…. but this one did not.

I had a few holes in the plan and usually clearing them out works out well. That was true for most of what I was about to fly… except for the arrival. The arrival waypoints were all wrong in the Airbus’ MCDU and when I tried to fix it… I made it worse. So much worse!

I spent the last portion of the flight trying to figure it out and continuing to make a mess of it. I deleted waypoints, I put arrivals in, I deleted those, and I ended up fudging the whole thing. And what happens when you really fudge it? Well you end up on a short final, not lined up on the runway and struggling to get the airplane down.

I made the worst landing that I’ve made with the A320 so far in this journey. It was a hard one with some banking and… yeah it was bad. But I did get it on the ground and the feet per minute was bad but not catastrophic -400ish fpm.

I taxied, parked, and called it day. On my homework list? More practices with landing the A320 and more learning on the MCDU and how to better get the arrival into place. One bonus, however, was the stunning scenery and the beautifully modeled airport. The learning goes on!

A few FlyByWire A320 comments

At some point I’ll be doing reviews and comparisons of various airliners on the market with my own unique combination of wants and desires guiding the review process. That said, I have to say that the FlyByWire A320neo is already at or near the top of my list of favourites.

The open source team has developed the base A320 into something else and they have managed to make it reasonably approachable and accessible for newbie pilots with a variety of features while also appealing to the more demanding hardcore airliner pilot by deeply simulating avionics and systems all across the airplane. It may offer the best mix of everything that I’ve tried so far and the best part is that it’s free to all Microsoft Flight Simulator owners.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still a complex beast and each flight as a newbie airliner pilot will be a challenging one. Having this experience in the sim, however, confronts you with new challenges and focuses you on finding solutions and that is a great way to learn as you go. I’m having fun, I’m learning new things, and this is going well on the whole.

I will be spending more time with this jet in the future so expect future Flight Journals on it and I’m more excited, having spent time with this jet, for their A380 project coming to fruition in the future!