Howdy! With Autopilot+ being introduced a couple weeks ago, it got me thinking: How much can I abuse this feature before it gets fixed enough where it doesn’t allow you to break the game?
To answer that question, I decided to do what may be the longest point-to-point flight in Infinite Flight, Bermuda to Perth. These 2 spots sit over 10,700nm away from each other with the majority of the flight being over the Pacific Ocean. If it weren’t obvious, this isn’t a real flight.
Along with 25.1 came the “realism” fix on the Max that would sadly undo its incredible range by increasing the aircraft’s empty weight from 80K lbs to just under 100K lbs (I’m not converting this to something else. 
).
Anyway, getting back to the point of this flight, I found along with everyone who uses Autopilot+ that values like ground speed, altitude, and fuel burn remain the same the entire time during autopilot+ until you get back online. This has been useful in doing flights that typically take longer to do (e.g. anything West bound). The fuel burn is where things get interesting.
Here we are on the island in the middle of nowhere, Bermuda (TXKF). Since this was my first attempt at trying ignore the laws of physics, the set altitude was varied between FL300 and FL450. Max fuel of around 45K lbs (will regret later) and 0 passengers or cargo. Also on casual service for specific reasons.
Flight plan was a direct shot to Perth. Literally the shortest possible route to somewhere on the other side of the planet. After saying my goodbyes to Illuminati island, I was off on my longest flight yet.
So, getting this set up correctly took around 20 minutes since I had no idea what I was doing. My first trick was to use the weird fuel burn glitch the Max has as it approaches FL500. Unfortunately, this made itself clear that it wasn’t going to work since the Max was a bit too heavy with the fuel. So I tried something else.
Autopilot+ works by taking several conditions into account that would make the flight stable. Once those conditions were met, Autopilot+ would be accessible. Autopilot+ saves the last position every 5 minutes so timing was consistent, yet a bit tricky to figure out. One condition that could help reset the timer was altitude. If you’re in a climb or descent, Autopilot+ won’t work, however, if the VS gets less than 300 fpm, it will same the position and start the timer again.
I decided that I would descend to FL300 to make things easier. During the resetting of the timer, it would take the current GS, altitude, and fuel burn at the very moment it was saved. When I got close to FL300, I reduced power to around 15% so the fuel burn was around 1,500 lbs per hour. Once Autopilot+ saved, I quickly quit the flight.
After I quit, I respawned in the Broken-22 to took off after myself to make sure everything was ok.
When I quit the flight in the Max, the fuel was at 40K lbs was the fuel burn was just under 1,500 lbs per hour.
25 Hours later
I came back about 30 minutes before landing and found something uncanny. More on that later.
After a heavy landing into Perth, it was time to do a little math.
Alright, so this flight ended up being a little too successful. If you remember from before, the fuel was at 40K while the fuel burn was at 1,500 when Autopilot+ saved. When I came back, the fuel was at 39K… For some very strange yet exciting reason, the Max during this flight was the most fuel efficient twin engine aircraft in Infinite Flight. So what happened?
Apparently, from the math I did, a 1000 lbs fuel burn over the course of 25 hours would mean the fuel burned per hour was 40 lbs. That’s right! 40! What this means is with a fuel tank of fuel, the Max technically has enough range to fly 500,000nm or 1000+ hours in a single trip…
The 737 MAX 8LR Lives on!
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day!
science:sparkles:
