LFBD-KSEA challenge

Hi everyone,

 

I decided to try the LFBD-KSEA challenge. I set things up using the Airbus A320neo and high-altitude airways. FS2020 set up a flight plan going over southern Ireland and Greenland, and then over North America. Naturally, I used autopilot with autothrottle.

 

Everything was proceeding nice and smoothly until I started to lose altitude over the last portion of Greenland (in other words, towards its western coast just prior to flying over Davis Strait). No matter what I did, I could not recover the plane, which crashed causing me to lose several flight hours. I thought that the autopilot must have failed.

 

So I proceeded to redo the flight, but this time I manually set the altitude to be 38,000 feet. I intended to keep that setting until I approached KSEA. But then the same thing happened in the same location -- the aircraft lost altitude over the western portion of Greenland and the plane crashed.

 

I examined things more closely, and I have concluded that the aircraft ran out of fuel.

 

But I have my FS2020 fuel settings for unlimited fuel. So how could I have encountered fuel exhaustion in my LFBD-KSEA attempts?

 

I see two possibilities as to what is going on:

 

> FS2020 is programmed so that, as soon as one loads a flight for LFBD-KSEA, it automatically requires a user to manually load fuel into the plane.

 

> Something else is going on, which caused my plane to lose altitude. But what would that be?

 

Does anyone please have an answer to this?

 

Thank you.

 

Stanley

Edited November 7, 2020 by Stanley777

It has been reckoned the aircraft in FS20 use more fuel than they should even at altitude. You can cheat a bit and just refuel in mid-air from one of the pull down menus. Also by default regardless of your flight plan, the planner always initially just loads 50% of fuel, you have to increase that and the manifest load manually.

Hi Vern and anyone else,

 

Thank you for your response.

 

I didn't know that the flight planner initially loads only 50% of fuel, even despite my global settings of unlimited fuel.

 

OK. So, I just did an experiment and took off in my Airbus A320neo. In mid-flight, I set the fuel to zero percent, and sure enough the Electronic Centralized Aircraft Monitor (ECAM) showed all x's for the throttle settings. I had exhausted my fuel. So next I changed the amount of fuel back to 100%, and the ECAM continued to show no fuel.

 

Thus, I am confused on how to increase my depleted fuel. If I change the settings using the menu but it has no effect on the aircraft, then how does one refill the fuel mid-flight?

 

Thank you.

 

Stanley

Hi everyone,

 

I am going to answer my own question.

 

Apparently, if you don't bring the fuel down to zero, then you can replenish the fuel supply mid-flight, because I have now done that. I guess, however, then you need to replenish the fuel before you have completely exhausted it.

 

Stanley

If you totally run out of fuel then replenishing in flight doesn’t fix your problem. I’ve done that, though not in an airliner, and you have to totally restart the engines. It was a mad scramble finding where the start switches are since I always start on the runway.

Hi everyone,

 

I decided to try the LFBD-KSEA challenge. I set things up using the Airbus A320neo and high-altitude airways. FS2020 set up a flight plan going over southern Ireland and Greenland, and then over North America. Naturally, I used autopilot with autothrottle.

 

Everything was proceeding nice and smoothly until I started to lose altitude over the last portion of Greenland (in other words, towards its western coast just prior to flying over Davis Strait). No matter what I did, I could not recover the plane, which crashed causing me to lose several flight hours. I thought that the autopilot must have failed.

 

So I proceeded to redo the flight, but this time I manually set the altitude to be 38,000 feet. I intended to keep that setting until I approached KSEA. But then the same thing happened in the same location -- the aircraft lost altitude over the western portion of Greenland and the plane crashed.

 

I examined things more closely, and I have concluded that the aircraft ran out of fuel.

 

But I have my FS2020 fuel settings for unlimited fuel. So how could I have encountered fuel exhaustion in my LFBD-KSEA attempts?

 

I see two possibilities as to what is going on:

 

> FS2020 is programmed so that, as soon as one loads a flight for LFBD-KSEA, it automatically requires a user to manually load fuel into the plane.

 

> Something else is going on, which caused my plane to lose altitude. But what would that be?

 

Does anyone please have an answer to this?

 

Thank you.

 

Stanley

 

I loaded the challenge and saw the Airbus had a range of 3,500 NM and could not complete the trip due to distance. I used the 787 Dreamliner and had no issues.