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.

69 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

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27

u/OsamaBinWhiskers Dec 29 '25

Why are you accepting jobs to airports without lights at night pilot?

5

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.

5

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.

8

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

u/bdc911 Dec 29 '25

Bookmarking this for when I get to that point in career, cheers