How do you fly the 717?

[NoahM]

So as someone who is a big fan of planes tail mounted engines (and MD80 family aircraft because who doesn’t love the mad dog) and I also love flying around Hawaii, but after practicing a few times landing the 717, if you’re at 140 knots on final, the plane will be pitched too high so you can’t see the runway, and if you’re at 160
Knots, the plane won’t drop unless at a -30% pitch. The last time I flew the the 717 on an actual flight was between Seattle and Honolulu and my landing in Honolulu was nose heads first (not kidding)

So how do you land the 717 because I want to fly it more between the Hawaiian islands and with Delta

[JacksonAviation]

@NoahM

Seattle and Honolulu

In a 717?!

[BadPlane]

Land at 150 knots, a nice middle ground

[KennedyTurner]

It’s a real route flown by Hawaiian Airlines as a ferry flight. To be able to do the flight, the cabin seats are removed and replaced by portable fuel tanks.

[Panther]

Simple answer? You don’t
The 717 is a very old aircraft. It is in desperate need of a rework.

[Captain_Finck]

Here is my tip for landing the 717. The plane has a VERY small margin when landing between either being too fast and you begin to climb or being to slow and you drop like a rock. Make sure you work the throttle as the margin I am talking about is only about two knots. Also you are not going to want to cut the throttle at 20 feet like you might in most jets as the plane will simply drop onto the runway.

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I can’t give a approach speed as that all will depend on wight but as long as you follow what I said above and find that perfect approach speed you should be able to get some nice landings out of the old bird!

Hope that helped!

[Airplane]

You’ll need to check your weight and balance to ensure that it’s properly configured for landing. Simbrief can help you do this. Once you’ve ensured that I recommend using a real 717 manual that you can find online to tell you what landing speed you need for a certain weight and balance. Also, I would not recommend flying the 717 from Seattle to Honolulu as that is almost 2,700 miles. With a fully loaded 717 I would only reccomend flying around 2,000 miles to account for varying winds and weather patterns at cruise. Cheers!

[NoahM]

Yeah I actually flew it, I left BFI (Boeing Field) with full fuel, no passengers, very little cargo and when I landed I had less than 1 minute of fuel remaining, it was REALLY CLOSE

[NoahM]

Yeah I just flew the BFI-HNL route to see if it would make it, but I want to fly it on Delta routes because they use it pretty often

[NoahM]

Thanks for the tips!

[JarrettFlies]

Why do I feel this is not very realistic?

[TOGA]

Because it’s not an actual 717 route and that this flight was done with little payload? Or that the in-game 717 is severely outdated?

[JarrettFlies]

I was mainly talking about the IRL flight. But I agree with the 717.

[TOGA]

IRL? I must’ve missed something then.

[JarrettFlies]

@NoahM

he last time I flew the the 717 on an actual flight was between Seattle and Honolulu and my landing in Honolulu was nose heads first (not kidding)

I think he means he actually flew on this route, but whoever flew it leaving less than 1 min of fuel does not seem realistic in the regulations world.

[Pilotzz]

Landing is easy.
Throttle 0
Spoilers Armed
Pull back while short final
After back gear touches runway pull down to land.

[DeltaMD88Fan]

I usually use around 80% upward trim and 25* flaps around 145-150 knots airspeed. I find using the autothrottle makes the landing harder so manually controlling the airspeed helps. It really doesn’t like to maintain glideslope so using inputs to the autopilot until minimums will help you keep the proper glide.

[FBWFTW]

Here’s the 717 checklist.

1. Wait for rework
2. See #1

[Kamryn]

You can vote for the rework here :)

Boeing 717 Rework

The 717’s History Initially, the Boeing 712 was developed by McDonnell-Douglas as the MD-95. It was a modernised version of the MD-80 (aka Maddog) for shorter regional routes. To do so, they changed the engines with less powerful engines, a shorter range and less seats. Boeing bought McDonnell-Douglas in August of 1997 so, naturally, the current MD-95 program was shifted to Boeing and it’s name was changed. The first 712 to be commercially used rolled out the the assembly lines in 1999 and st…

[Kirby_D]

The 717… yeah it’s tricky.
First, you can take a look at this:

Boeing 717-200 Tutorial

The Boeing 717-200 is one plane that is rather difficult to control, not because of an old design, like the A321 before the update, but because, as stated in another post dedicated to the 717, that the Devs added the faults of the original plane. The most obvious thing is the 717s rapid acceleration (with only 40% thrust needed for achieving 90kts) and inaccurate speed given when one activates the A/P for the speed. This is a tutorial that covers the trim, flap speeds, flaps needed for takeoff…

It’s an old post, but probably still applies.
Here are some notes I made for myself a couple of months ago. Keep in mind I haven’t flown it since then. See if it helps and experiment.

717-200
Flaps 30: 148-150Kts
Flaps 40: ~143-145 Kts
-3 to -3.5 degree pitch angle(very different than most other aircraft in IF)
Start round-out at 50’ AGL
Cut power 20’ AGL
Flare to pitch 2 degrees

Notes:
Flaps 30 is on there because I think solo mode spawning on approach uses that setting.
Pitch is KING. Pitch = speed, so your favored pitch angle will adjust for different weights and conditions to some extent. You’ll have to use HUD view to practice And nail the pitch angle. But it’s oddly simple, at about -3 degrees = the same as standard glide slope, just point your nose at the touchdown point!
Speeds probably represent a landing weight with some end-of-flight reserve fuel, nearly full passengers, and their freaking bags, and no Christmas Turkeys :-). So how much does all that weigh?.. :-).