AP disengaged and plane dropped, near North Pole

[Veloist]

Hi all, so it’s been a while since I’ve done a long haul so I wanted to do a trial flight from OMDB-KSFO on the Casual Server to get in the groove again and to avoid ruining my 0 violation history in case the plane falls and overspeeds.

Well that’s exactly what happened, and today I learned Casual Server flights don’t record flight States—which makes me more puzzled as to why the plane just fell out of the sky.

So backstory, I had the flight on for roughly 7 hours in, and then the game paused overnight due to an iPad system notification (“iPad could not update”, I guess I had auto update on since it was plugged in). Luckily Flight Resume saved the location when I was d/ced from the server so I was able to resume the flight.

The AP d/c and crash happened about an hour after starting Flight Resume. Watching the flight, the plane starts banking right and compass does a 180.

Any insight? Would really like to avoid this once I’m flying on ES again.

Flight Info:
OMDB-KSFO
Aircraft: A380
Cruising at FL350 during incident
Roughly 50% load
Roughly 7.5 hours of fuel left shown when flight was resumed.

Replay: Share My Infinite Flight

Device: iPad Pro 10.5 inch
Operating system: iPad OS 17.7.2

[BennyBoy_Alpha]

How close did you fly to the North Pole - from my experience the autopilot doesn’t like it if you fly too close to it.

[Veloist]

Based on past posts I’ve read this could be a possibility, but I did use a flight plan that I flew on before

I literally had NOPOL waypoint

[BennyBoy_Alpha]

Yeah having NOPOL as a waypoint to fly directly over isn’t a good idea. The autopilot does strange things with the sudden heading change.

[schyllberg]

Early January, we loaded new data that’s more recent in terms of magnetic variation.
So could be that just because it worked before, it won’t now.

And yes, this is a known issue but also not the most prioritized one given the very rare circumstances you have to be in to encounter it and it’s not an easy fix unfortunately.

[Veloist]

I see, yes that could be it then, I’ve always had NOPOL on every OMDB-KSFO flight I did.

I guess my goal will be to try to find a route where the directional change isn’t so drastic but still a polar route…

[Sturmovik]

Do you know if this issue could arise if I did a transpolar flight between SAWG (Argentina) and NZAA? I’d cross the South Pole.

[schyllberg]

Honestly, haven’t heard about any issues with the South Pole.

[Veloist]

Small update, I was testing the same situation yesterday on Casual Server, was able to replicate the issue

It happens right on NOPOL when the heading changes 180 AND while the LNAV banks in the direction of the next waypoint.

So then I experimented with a new flight, deleting NOPOL 1-minute before intercepting it, and was able to fly through during the 180 heading change.

The plane still gets off like 2-3 degrees off track multiple times while approaching the waypoint, but the AP can correct it without freaking out.

I’ll try a full flight again with the same flight plan and will post findings here.

Also the issue doesn’t happen on Solo