Tutorial: How to land a plane in Google Earth Flight Simulator

Landing a plane in Google Flight Simulator requires practice practice and more practice. However, it can be made easy if you follow this tutorial.

Let’s start off in Chicago, going 90 degrees downward at about 250 knots. We are currently about 69000 feet above sea level:

In this case, I have to turn to reach the ground. This can be accomplished using 0 (left) and Enter (right) on the number pad. The upside-down T indicates where your plane will be if you press 5, which centers all your controls:

Prior to landing, you should make sure that the arrows at the top of your HUD are aligned. This is done by using 4 and 6, and 5 to stabilize when you’re done.

Turn your thrust down (page down), put the flaps up at 100% (right bracket), and put down the landing gear. This will slow down your aircraft:

As you approach sea level (around +2500 ft), you will want to lessen your angle of descent to about 10-20 degrees. Once you are less than 1000 feet off the ground, lessen your angle of descent to the neighborhood of 5 degrees:

As you approach the ground, you will want your descent almost at zero. Do not attempt landing until your speed is well below 300 knots.

The ground will steadily crawl up from under. You can tell that your aircraft’s landing gear has touched when a little bump occurs.

At that time, press , and . (left and right wheel brake) to slow the craft down. Also retract the flaps (left bracket). It is also helpful to press the Up arrow to make sure that your airplane doesn’t take off again, but do this only when your speed is leess than 150 knots.

Keep holding down the wheel brakes until you have come to a complete stop.

Congrats! You have landed!

(thank you to Brad for pointing out that it’s knots, not mph)

UPDATE: For those of you who want to see the landing in action, check out this video:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc-kJ6gQVSg]