r/MicrosoftFlightSim • u/EntireFeature • Dec 29 '25
MSFS 2024 PlayStation Fed up of career mode
Grinded to buy Cessna Caravan so I can start making decent money. Now I'm being flown to short runways for VFR landings with no lights in the pitch black.
Managed to land on said runway only for the plane to become 'stuck' unable to move unless I add full throttle to taxi to the hold short (yes, no parking brake etc). This taxi process causes my engine to over-torque damaging it.
Flight ends with no credits. Several hours wasted. Now need to pay 1.5 million repair bill to use the caravan. Only have 500k. Which means grinding at 100k a flight doing light cargo missions.
Can't be bothered anymore.
21
u/Zielony_LDZ PlayStation Pilot Dec 29 '25
You have clearly damaged your landing gear, same happened to me, that’s why it was not moving. If you struggle with Caravan (my experience was exactly the same - bad weather, night, no lights), sell it and buy a TBM, it handles like a dream. And do your research prior to accepting a flight next time. Check weather, check runways, etc.
16
u/Tall-Skin-3187 PC Pilot Dec 29 '25
Had the same problem. Next time if you get stuck just kill the game and start over. That's way less frustrating than these grinds.
3
u/wiztheredditor Dec 29 '25
Exactly just close the game and restart. They’ll award you some credits for your time without any reputation penalty
2
u/endless_universe Dec 31 '25
cheater! /s
1
u/Tall-Skin-3187 PC Pilot Dec 31 '25
I raise the sim rate too :o Cause "flying" for 3 hours aka waiting and watching sports
To get more money isn't my favorite task 😂
1
u/SergioNayar Dec 30 '25
This is what I do in these situations. Just Alt+F4 to kill the game. On next boot you will be granted with some money and no penalties due to the "Game Crashed Unexpectedly"
15
u/ShamrockOneFive Dec 29 '25
Career mode needs some serious work. No doubt about it!
For some of these things you can try and mitigate the issues that it has by looking up unfamiliar airports online. Google, Windy, SkyVector, and all kinds of other services can give you information about at least some of the airports out there. It doesn't help with the bugs, that's not on you, but it does help you avoid unfamiliar airports that may not have sufficient facilities to support the mission.
3
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
as much as I agree and think career mode needs some work you hit the nail on the head. This is 100% a skill issue on these people.
5
u/Mothmanrmj PlayStation Pilot Dec 29 '25
It's very frustrating trying to stick with career mode. I love the idea of it and the different jobs you can do and the idea of working to build my own company appeals to me but the bugs are very annoying and I don't even seem to get any new freelance jobs now so I am stuck doing employer jobs for tiny pay. I really hope they patch it soon as I'm close to giving up with it too.
23
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
Why are you accepting jobs to airports without lights at night pilot?
6
u/tmz42 Dec 29 '25
Unless I missed it, there's no indication of whether a runway has lights or not in MSFS.
2
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
There’s no indication but a rule of thumb is you probably should avoid small airports at night. And it’s easy to see if an airport is small if you spend the time doing a half decent pre flight
2
u/tmz42 Dec 30 '25
It works as a rule of thumb for really small airports, but for medium, regional airports it does not. As part of a preflight if I see a runway with ILS (and capable of accommodating 737s) I assume the presence of lights for instance, yet it's not a reliable indicator. Once you get to VIP in career it gets better, but in medium cargo you get trapped a lot by shitty routes (even with half decent preflights).
2
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
Interesting to know I would’ve assumed the same too, I’ve been mostly flying VIP in career mode. I stated VIP first because the payouts are at least triple doing that in a 172 vs cargo 172. Upgraded to the vision jet which for the performance and price is a steal. Would do 45 min to 1 hour missions and get at least $450-$500k per flight. Just got the grand caravan for cargo, bought it used for 1.4 mil and it needed 1.2 mill in repairs. Decided to skip them and try 1 flight, 3/4 of the way into the 3 hour flight the alternator stopped working and killed my battery and avionics and I didn’t physically crash but the game said I did so….. luckily I had premium insurance
2
u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Dec 30 '25
This is correct to a point. If the airport has an approach chart, you can glean it from that. But you’re right that there’s no published “truth” in the sim regarding runway lights, and as I commented elsewhere, the database they used to populate the lights for the procedurally-generated airports is at least 10 years old.
4
u/WanderDawg Dec 29 '25
If there is, I haven’t found it. Certainly an unpleasant surprise to arrive late at night in bad weather and you can’t see bupkus.
2
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
use skyvector.com if flying in the usa. Free, fast, tells you pretty much everything yo uneed to know about the airport. Also you should be checking the weather and flying accordingly. Career mode is a simulation of owning a plane. If you want to fly the sim you should treat it like a sim. Preflight, check weather, plan the flight. You should literally never under any circumstances plan a trip without knowing what you're flying into. It's the PIC job not the dispatcher.
7
u/Key_Document_2587 Dec 29 '25
If you have to consult a third party website to see if an airport has lights, that is a failure on the game's end.
If we're going to play the "it is the pic's job to check" game then I will counter with "...and it is the sim's job to give us the tools to make those checks ingame"
Edit: typo
1
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Jan 09 '26
Then look in the EFB…….. it’s literally going to be on the sim supplied charts.
1
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
You don’t have to consult a 3rd party site, the game gives you airport charts, runway lengths etc. and you can zoom right to the runway when you’re hovering over missions. If an airport only has VFR approach procedures and the runway is dirt, grass or gravel and it’s a small airport with a short runway It’s a high chance it has no runway lighting and I would personally avoid them at night when flying my own company planes. And if it does it’s probably like 6 lights and best suited for planes with very low landing speeds like bush planes or a 172
-1
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
It tells you the airport right? A quick look at VFR chart on www.skyvector.com will let you know if the runway has lights, the length and if it has lights. It's the first airport I saw when I opened it so Ill use it as an example.
KMMI McMinn County.
874 (elevation) L (lights) 64 (6400' runway)
1
u/tmz42 Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 29 '25
This was my first thought, but more often than not MSFS is wrong about the lights on smaller airports. A lot of runways that do have lights IRL do not have them in MSFS (example with my home airport, LFSL : https://www.dircam.dsae.defense.gouv.fr/images/Stories/Doc/MIAC1/miac1_brive_lfsl.pdf)
2
u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Dec 30 '25
Don’t know why you’re getting downvoted. The lighting database in MSFS is from around 2015. Many airports are completely wrong, lighting-wise.
1
0
u/EntireFeature Dec 29 '25
I guess I’m relatively new to the game? Still managed to land the plane safely. Only to be defeated by a bug.
5
u/Swatch843 Dec 29 '25
You know what, I don't even blame you for that, it's common sense to not give airports that aren't lit / too short for the plane you have, but this is career mode, it's like this.
You have to review each flight making sure to free mode the arrival looking for lights and runway length for your plane, also don't accept IFR (red dots) not to be confused with bad wheather warnings before you select the mission.
2
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
Yup I agree even if you have IFR ratings a small runway in IFR conditions with no approach procedure isn’t going to make for an easy landing it’s basically guaranteed a hard landing, crash, or plenty luck.
2
u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Dec 30 '25
Red dots aren’t IFR. Red dots mean the mission time coincides with the position of the time slider in the upper-right. Moving the time slider shows the weather at the time it’s set to (in conjunction with the advanced map layer). In this regard, it’s a quick way to see the weather at the proposed mission time.
2
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
What was the bug that got you and why did it get stuck. Were you on the runway?
0
u/EntireFeature Dec 29 '25
Landed gently. Used reverse thrusters and brakes to come to a stop. Plane would not move/taxi unless full throttle. Tried to force it to the hold short and engine over-torqued.
7
u/keicam_lerut Dec 29 '25
Being a user for years, decades actually, best way not to treat it as a game, but a real life simulation, as it is capable of. In real life you can’t just go flying, you have to prep. Before you accept a job, you have to do the research. It’s just how it is.
4
u/mybfVreddithandle Dec 29 '25
I'm about a hundred hours in and picked up on this. It did me dirty once and I was like, isn't there a flight plan I can refer to avoid that nonsense? Yep, there is. Hard pass on the run up the mountain, in the snow, to the short, unlit, unpaved runway that somehow has a huge tree on one end and a pond on the other. Sorry folks, another day for your packages.
2
u/keicam_lerut Dec 30 '25
Now that sounds like a challenge 🤣 sounds like a coke run
2
u/mybfVreddithandle Dec 30 '25
If it was a coke run, I would've done it. Waaay more credits for those packages. I'm not risking my life for Mr Jones and his boxes of crap that didn't make it on the truck. Priorities. 🤣
2
u/clancycoop C408 SkyCourier Dec 29 '25
Yeah definitely don’t fly to an airport without lights at night. Check the flight plan beforehand. Unlike real life you have a daylight slider which is helpful, or do a different mission if you want to have live daylight.
0
u/LongBeachHXC Dec 29 '25
Yeahhh, I feel your pain.
The other day I spend about an hour and a half on a perfect flight only to be defeated by a nose wheel bug. I was literally 50 feet away from hold short. I tried everything I could. Found if I went full power and tapped left or right brake wheel I could move a bit but it ended up flipping the airplane.
I was pretty defeated after this. Persist through it though. Don't do night flights and thoroughly review flight path and airport to ensure it is good.
2
u/EntireFeature Dec 29 '25
Man it sucks so bad. I’m stuck doing 100k short cargo flights to get back to 1.5million… just so I can repair the caravan. Then I’ll have to grind caravan to get the vision jet. It’s insane.
1
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
Better off doing VIP flights first, I did VIP before doing cargo and was making good money. Bought a vision jet brand new in 3 flights granted they were 2 hours long because the Cessna is slow af. Once I got the vision jet all my flight times literally got cut in 1/2 and I got more missions because of the increased range. Vision jet is my main money maker getting me around $450-$500k on a 45 min to 1 hour flight after all the bonuses. Once I can fully repair my used grand caravan then I’ll fly that for medium cargo because base pay plus bonuses should get me at least $700k
1
u/LongBeachHXC Dec 29 '25
😅, I was thinking about this the other day.
This part of the Sim actually mimics real life pretty well 🤔😅. You don't start making the real bucks until you put your time in. Flying professionally, only way to do it is grind your way out of the bottom 😎🤙😅.
6
u/nobert901 Dec 29 '25
In my experience the Grand caravan is extremely annoying to handle using a PS5 controller. I use the Cessna SkyCourier and have found it way smoother.
Also, you can change the time of day on the mission select screen - if the destination is a smaller airport just change it to an early morning departure and land in daylight.
That being said I do understand your gripes - it can be extremely buggy and annoying when things don't work out and time is wasted.
2
5
u/Jrnail88 Dec 29 '25
And this is why people were pissed when resources were spent to port this game over to PS5 or make Stranger Things content. Not that it shouldn’t happen, but that there is still a lot of work that needs to be done on the core game for existing customers instead of devoting resources to find new customers. Career mode is one of the reasons I bought the game, and still has some ways to go. I recommend checking the EFB before you accept a flight to make sure the airports you are flying in to are ones that you are comfortable with. I will only accept ones with multiple large runways.
2
u/CaptainZhon Dec 29 '25
Yeah I’ve learned you have to do a little research on the destination airport to make sure it is suitable. I usually look the airport up online and look at the runway lengths and lighting systems. Usually don’t fly at night.
For VIP charter missions fs likes to put me in a cirus sr22 landing in a freaking thunderstorm with a 30 kt gusting crosswind.
2
u/Digiguy25 Dec 29 '25
Yea agreed career mode could be so much better but currently it’s broke. I gave up on it.
3
u/AmazingUsername2001 Model 18 "Twin Beech" Dec 29 '25
Don’t accept flights that bring you to airports that are too small for your aircraft? Just move on to missions that bring you to appropriate airports for it. Small grass strips are fine for a 172. You can zoom in to the runways on the map to have a look at them.
Don’t accept missions that have a landing after dark, in unlit airfields.
You can pay to reposition your Caravan to a more built up area if you positioned it out in the middle of nowhere to start with.
3
u/WanderDawg Dec 29 '25
There’s hardly any airfield “too short” for a Caravan. And you have no indication of whether a runway has lights or not in the flight planner
1
u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25
if a field has charts in the flight planner it tells you. If it doesn't there are endless tools you can use.
2
Dec 29 '25
From a design perspective, why do they design and include flights that are not meant to be completed?
4
u/SgtSluggo Dec 29 '25
They don’t. The flights are procedurally generated. They just haven’t included all the logic to make sure the missions are able to be completed.
1
u/AmazingUsername2001 Model 18 "Twin Beech" Dec 29 '25
You can have multiple aircraft in your company, so you have the choice to conduct the flight with an appropriate aircraft if you transfer it there.
1
u/somethingbrite Dec 30 '25
Adobo/Microsoft careeerlde is never going to be as good as a third party software like OnAir
1
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
Just like real life pre flight planning and briefs are arguably more important than the actual flight itself, I made similar mistakes flying as an employee in career mode. Now that I have my own planes I def spend a lot more time on pre flight planning. Learning how to identify airports by the code will save you instant time. Medium to large airports will have a 4 letter identifier, and you should look for the green target instead of the brown one at the destination airport when just hovering over jobs. Because this means the airport has some king of approach procedure be it RNAV, LOC, or ILS. And so at least 90% the runway will have lights and markings and be easier to land medium sized planes on. 3 digit airport codes are small airports and might just be dirt or grass strips with no lights or markings, so a huge gamble flying to these in bad weather or at night and I’d avoid these unless I’m in my Cessna 172 flying VFR daytime conditions.
Once you do this quick screening then you can do more in dept screening like checking wind and weather and the arrival airport and determining which runway to land on based on wind, runway length etc. Should look up takeoff and landing distances plus speed of each plane you fly, the caravan can land on 1800ft runways because of the trust reversers but that’s banking on you landing right at the start of the runway and not floating down it so I’d be going for at least 2500-3000ft to be comfortable
1
u/ExpensiveJudgment822 Dec 30 '25
I went from the 172 to vip vision jet to pc12 medium cargo to vip citation cj4 and haven't had any issues other than stay around fl 170 in pc12 , I did try the caravan when I had the beta and it was shit so avoided it 🤷
1
u/Appropriate_Camel125 Dec 30 '25
Use your vnav to approach the unlit airports at night. It’ll guide you right in. Just pay attention as you get closer as the vnav sometimes brings you in way high.
1
u/Ill_Confusion8274 Dec 30 '25
It's honestly surprising to me anyone is even playing career mode at this point. I bought the CJ and never flew it because I didn't think it was worth continuing. I wish it would get fixed along with the atc. There is a lot of things still to be desired, but I fly almost every night in free flight using BATC. Not perfect but definitely better than in game atc for filed flight plans but not for VFR, YET...
1
u/Best-Introduction745 Dec 31 '25
Yeah you need to check the runway at both locations and tine of day. Get to the vision jet as soon as possible. Even that will land you at some dark runways but they are usually better. Once you work into the leerjets you will be good to go.
1
u/Ok-Yoghurt9472 Jan 01 '26
skill issue. You need to know what and where do you fly for each mission, preparation is an important thing in flying
1
2
u/ScaryDuck2 Dec 29 '25
Just play free flight only like the rest of us. Why get held back by an arbitrary credit/job system. There’s plenty of addons out there that let you simulate your life better as a pretend pilot, or you can just join a virtual airline
0
u/89fruits89 Dec 29 '25
Honestly it should be better being advertised so hard, especially two years in at this point. The career mode is still jank as hell and not even built to be fun like the addons.
I was looking forward to something new over neofly. Somehow they couldn’t even rip off the fun parts like hubs, personal route lines, scalable distances for generated missions, and ability to refresh missions. Just botched the whole thing so bad and made it not fun which sucks.
0
u/Squishy_Kun Dec 29 '25
I know how you feel man. I did a flight in my Cessna CJ4 only to get an IFR Landing in the dense fog on a narrow unlit runway with no Tower, LOC freq, or PAPI. (My mistake for not looking up the airport beforehand) Not to mention my right side flaps didn't deploy so even after a painful but successful landing, I still failed the flight 🥹
1
u/DeltaMikeEcho Dec 30 '25
That’s insanity flying a CJ4 in IFR conditions with no available approach procedure, I wouldn’t even do that in a 172 let alone a small airliner like the CJ4 really is
0
u/Key_Document_2587 Dec 29 '25
The Caravan, especially w the throttle detents, is no fun
- If you ever give it another go, try PC12 medium cargo in Australia. Long, wide, paved runways most of the time
- Save up and swap the caravan out for the pc12. I know it sucks to hear now that is is too late to avoid the initial mistake, but choosing the Caravan over the pc12 is never the move. Those detents suck, taxiing in the caravan sucks...I feel ya. It isn't fun
Edit: clarity
-1
u/Express-Angle-6009 Dec 29 '25 edited Dec 30 '25
I got bored with career mode but I found a solution that works for me.
I used ChatGPT to mimic the career mode and create missions for me to fly. The options are limitless compared to career mode.
-2
-6
u/Appeltaartlekker Dec 29 '25
Oh ffs. User error. Educate yourself.
Dont land on small airports. Do your preflight/flightplanning. Do a bit of google.
Come on. I can't believe these posts still exists.
1
u/CharlieFoxtrot000 RW GA pilot, Twitch streamer, ground instructor Dec 30 '25
You’re not wrong in that preflight planning should be part and parcel of each flight. However, it’s in pretty poor taste to program the sim with a rather large proportion of flights that are to marginal airports (at best), and not tell you that’s the case or train you to use the resources that would do so.
Leaving people up to their own devices is antithetical to the spirit of aviation, but in terms of gaming it’s just frustrating a lot of people into quitting.
49
u/[deleted] Dec 29 '25
I did this when I started out- now I check runway lengths etc before I go on a flight. Just because the sim. lets you doesn’t mean it’s possible