How’s the good ole ATR 72-600 doing these days? The aircraft is available in MSFS 2024 but I haven’t yet had a chance to fly it until recently so I thought it was time to change that with some ATR flying. Here’s how it went!

Time for some Tahiti flying

Those who have been regular readers for a long time will know that I’m a fan of the ATR 42-600 and 72-600 in Microsoft Flight Simulator. It was the first of the Expert Series of aircraft and it was the first airliner that “clicked” for me. The nature of turboprop flying into some of the world’s more interesting and occasionally remote locales is part of the appeal as well.

The aircraft is not perfect and has a fair number of bugs but I can mostly look past them. How well has it made the transition to 2024? It’s mostly good but with some problematic issues. For example, at the end of this flight I couldn’t get the port side engine to stop spinning or shut down. Starboard was fine. I don’t know. Other parts of the flight went smoothly with high frame rates.

Another issue? Only a handful of liveries are available on Flightsim.to compared to the hundreds that are available for the 2020 version. Not explicitly Microsoft or Asobo’s fault, however, the default selection is limited so you kind of have to make due with what’s there. Thus… I’m returning to the Air Tahiti experience!

For this flight I departed Temae (NTTM) located on the island of Moorea, French Polynesia. Destination was Bora Bora Airport (NTTB). Both were added as part of World Update XIII: Oceania and the locations are stunning. Air Tahiti flies their ATR fleet between these two locations regularly so there’s a bit of real world ops there too.

After backtracking on Runway 30, I held the brakes and powered up the ATR 72-600 for a rapid departure on what ended up being a slightly shorter runway than I had thought. A bit of a nail biter right at the end, fortunately, we were up and away! We apparently scared some cattle who went running into the nearby water!

Banking away from the island into a beautiful morning sky, I setup the autopilot and we climbed up to our cruise altitude.

This is when I went to have a look at how the aircraft is looking and its just as sharp (if slightly overly clean) as before. I feel like the interior must have seen some sort of update at some point because I don’t remember it being this sharp. Also, the light leaks into the cargo and passenger areas seem to have been resolved in 2024 which is great to see.

I was running frame gen here so the propeller nose cone looks a little off in that picture and that’s because of the AI component struggling with the fast moving object. I’m assuming that the system can be tuned somehow to recognize that kind of object. Still, the performance gain is worthwhile with frame rates hovering in the 70-80 range and the whole thing feeling buttery smooth!

During our cruise we flew over several islands. Each with beautiful water masking and stunning teals next to deep ocean blue. Very impressive visuals to be sure.

Then it was time for our arrival at Bora Bora. I setup the airplane for a landing on Runway 11 which meant overflying the airport before completing the descent and doubling back for the arrival.

Landing here didn’t seem to pose a problem for the ATR with thrust reversers making for a very short backtrack and parking at an available ramp space.

Here is where I shut down the aircraft but struggled to get the one engine to stop entirely. Even state changing didn’t help. A weird bug!

More ATR flying to come?

The ATR is definitely flyable and more than capable of doing the kind of flying its intended for. There are some liveries available for it and I fully intend to make use of them for some flights before too long. The aircraft is a lot of fun to operate and the beautiful locales really help boost the appeal. On the flipside, I’m missing some more real world operators liveries that were available in 2020 (and I hope we see some updates from creators to help with that) especially as the included options are so limited.

More flying to come and fingers crossed for a bug fix pass too!