Hosted by Microsoft Flight Simulator’s Chewy94, the European community manager, Synaptic Simulations previewed their A220 airliner on the official Microsoft Flight Simulator Twitch channel. The recording of the session has now been made available and its time to have a look at what’s on offer.

Things that we learned, some that we didn’t

The one hour and twelve minute stream for Synaptic’s A220 garnered quite a bit of interest from community members. The highly anticipated airliner release has been in the works for about five years now and the developer together with publisher iniBuilds is certainly attracting a lot of attention for the modern airliner.

The showcase of the aircraft gave us an in-depth look at systems, flight planning, failures, realistic engine start-up times (its about a minute long for each PW1500G GTF engine), plus lots of unique quirks about the A220 and its various warning and failure systems. The developers weren’t afraid to take it on a relatively challenging approach into Innsbruck airport either which can be challenging.

Synaptic have also confirmed via the stream that CPDLC (Controller-Pilot Data Link Communications) and weather radar are not going to make the initial release. Some real world A220 pilots have popped into the chat to report that their A220s don’t have CPDLC so this may be accurate for some though surely missed by others.

What we haven’t yet learned is the release date or the price. Expectations have been building as iniBuilds has launched a marketing campaign on their social media for the airliner. Community expectations and the goal of the live stream were slightly mismatched as a result. We’ve also not yet heard about pricing for the aircraft.

More is surely to come on both of those subjects. Hopefully iniBuilds “soon” indications are quite soon indeed.