I’m in the process of readying a review for the X-Crafts E-Jets series for X-Plane 12 and I thought I’d do what should have been quite a scenic flight into Innsbruck flying a route that Austrian Airlines. Instead, I got moody weather and a fair bit of piloting error that lead to a moment where I said some choice words. Here’s how it went!

Startup

Starting off at Salzburg airport with the E195 and the included Austrian Airlines livery seemed fitting. The carrier operates flights regularly into Innsbruck and I thought the legendary airport would be a great place to visit.

As usual, I like to use live weather. In this case I picked live weather minus several hours so I’d be doing the flight in daylight. It didn’t matter much as the weather for the flight was not going to be great and this would factor into a harrowing moment later on. The startup was very moody with light rain and reduced visibility.

The E-Jets are very automated airliners which makes starting them easy and quick. I’ve done this enough now that I’m getting really quick at going through most of the process in short order. It takes a bit longer if you do all of the checks and tests but either way this is a fast plane to start and go.

After taxiing out, I lined up on Runway 33, and pushed the throttles into TOGA. Away we went up into the bleak rainsoaked clouds.

For the first twenty or so minutes of the flight, we were cruising in light turbulence and heavy precipitation. The deicing system is automatic but it came on several times keeping the aircraft operating normally.

We cleared the rain and the thick clouds into more scattered clouds. This seemed like a welcome reprieve and I think that’s probably when I let my guard down a little.

I’ve done around a couple dozen flights with the X-Crafts E-Jets over the last several months and I have had no issues with the aircraft accepting routing information – except with this airport. It’ll be worth a note in my review but in writing this I don’t want people to get the wrong impression because I think what I experienced here is an outlier that just won’t come up elsewhere.

I should have taken a screenshot because it really struggled with the setup here. I’m still learning charts and procedures here so this journal is as much about my ongoing learning process as it is a bit of a cavalier attitude to hoping things will work out – fine when its only some pixels on the line.

Anyways, we reached the waypoint that saw us make a turn to the south and an approach in to Innsbruck from the west. This part was normal but the pathway after that was a bit of a mess of angles. I’ve learned from various real world airliner pilots and videos that this approach is quite a unique one and not every simulated airplane can handle it… I think that may be the case here.

What I decided to do was go on heading mode and try and follow the VNAV guidance while averaging out the pathway that I was supposed to follow. I made some guesses at where the mountain tops were (Innsbruck is in a valley surrounded by tall peaks) and I decided to see what would happen.

And that’s when a bit of swearing happened as the aircraft followed the VNAV guidance and my heading directions down, out of the clouds, and into some clear air…. and mountain peaks directly ahead!

I disengaged the autopilot, yanked back on the stick, and avoided the peaks ahead. Narrowly. Pause button and a screenshot here for posterity to going “full send” on a difficult approach.

The upside to all of this was that, despite the moody weather, things cleared up enough for me to spot Innsbruck and the approach. I got things safely under control and brought the aircraft down out of the worst of the visibility and into a landing approach. Air brake use, some hands on flying, and a bit of a nail biter of an arrival helped get me in, down, and landed.

Despite the rough approach, it was one of my more gentle touchdowns with a smooth flare and roll out. The X-Crafts E-Jets is quite satisfying to fly as well which did make this a very enjoyable part of the experience.

Survived!

That was a bit of an unexpected journey and one I wanted to write about. While I often aim to show beautiful flights or ones worth flying, I think it good too as I continue to learn about processes and procedures from casual to more detailed levels and layers that I document some of the dicey things that I’ve done too.

As always, this is a simulator, no harm in trying things out and learning. Here was a reminder why strict adherence to flight planning and approach phases can be so vitally and viscerally important.

On a completely other note, I have to say that X-Plane 12’s latest lighting and weather improvements have made for better experiences. Dark and moody skies feel more real, the ability to time shift not just the sun but weather, adds more realistic conditions for the time of day, and the overall lighting system was really firing away on all cylinders here. There was some weirdness too meaning that they haven’t solved all of their issues… but it is getting better.