It’s been months since I last flew iniBuilds A300-600 for Microsoft Flight Simulator. It’s an aircraft that I’ve enjoyed a whole lot since picking it up and I intend to fly it quite a bit into the future. For this flight journal, I did a short hop from Dublin to Leeds-Bradford airport shaking off some rust and dusting off some scenery that has recently been upgraded to work with 2024. Let’s have a look!

Enjoying it

MSFS 2024 has been a difficult sim to enjoy. As I wrote at the start of the year, I’m fully convinced that the product will eventually mature and become a very enjoyable. For the moment, however, its a bit of a mess in a number of ways. In order to enjoy it, I’ve been avoiding doing some things like getting any further into the career mode and using the ATC. That and them finally fixing the live traffic failures that were going on for the longest time have improved my enjoyment.

I was also keen to get back into some airliner flying. I have flown one or two flights with airliners in MSFS 2024 recently but most of my flying has been in smaller simpler aircraft and I wanted to get back to the big cargo haulers. Now was a great opportunity to reconnect with the A300-600.

The version that I’m operating this time around is the A300-600 Compatible edition. This is the version that iniBuilds is offering for owners of the original 2020 edition and I wanted to see what it was like before likely upgrading at some point in the future.

Setup

The setup here took me far longer than it normally does as I wanted to get to know everything again. I had forgotten quite a bit while other pieces of the puzzle came back to me almost instantly. I definitely messed up a few things but still managed to have an enjoyable flight on the whole.

After starting up and getting the tug to push us back, I taxiied the jet out and it was time for a takeoff. My departure point was Dublin airport which I have occasionally spotted these ASL Airlines Ireland/DHL aircraft show up on FlightRadar. My destination wasn’t based on anything in particular except that I didn’t have time for a lengthy flight and I wanted to once again visit Leeds-Bradford to admire the scenery. With SimBrief plan in hand, a powered up A300-600 lined up on the runway, and throttles set to TOGA it was time to go!

The big jet trundling along the runway is always exhilarating! Then suddenly you’re airborne and it feels like there’s nothing stopping you at that point.

After a quick few moments in IMC, we were through the cloud layer and flying high into the sun above Dublin.

The crossing over the Irish Sea afforded us none of the views as thick clouds were everywhere to be seen. It did give me a great chance to look at some of the details of the A300-600 again which continue to impress long after its initial launch. iniBuilds are set to talk about the A350 and a release is apparently set for later this month (news on that as it comes in) and I’m curious to see how that jet has improved over this one if it can.

One thing I was impressed with here was performance. The A300-600 has always been a bit sluggish in the frame rate department but despite this being the compatible version (with promised performance improvements on the 2024 native version), everything seemed to go much more smoothly indeed.

The next part of my flight, the descent, went a little less according to plan. While I’m pretty good with flying the jet these days, setting up the approach for Leeds-Bradford seemed to go in weirdly and so I ended up with a really convoluted approach that required some manual control. I’m glad it wasn’t a stream because the whole thing would have been a bit of an embarrassment (hey, I’m rusty!) … but I did manage to get myself aligned for a landing on the suggested Runway 32.

The approach was beautiful with the setting sun and MSFS 2024’s excellent low light rendering.

The landing started out well despite being a little low and then a little high. But I did get it down despite some bumps on the runway. Spoilers automatically deployed, autobreak set to medium and reversers on. The large widebody reached the turn off point and I got it off the runway.

Then I had to find a parking spot. I had picked one out before landing, however, MSFS 2024 right now seems to be spawning parked aircraft seemingly at random as you taxi. I picked no less than three spots that immediately spawned a parked plane as I approached. Ugh.

So I parked in between them… awkwardly. That’s just how it is right now.

A good return to the A300-600 with plans to fly it quite a bit more in the future!