I did a live flight in the casual server from Chicago to Mexico City. The flight was going perfectly fine. I climbed and cruised at 40,000 ft. and began my descent about 40 minutes to the airport. I encountered some mountains during descent so I had to stay a little bit higher in altitude. Once I reached the airport (about 3 minutes away) I was at 8,000 ft. in altitude. However, while I was at 8,000 ft. I crashed. How is it possible that I could have crashed if I was still a significant distance above the ground?
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Well, the rear of your plane could have smashed into a mountain if you descended that quickly next to a mountain (I know it’s unlikely, just an idea). Also did you check the airports elevation? Maybe you were closer to the ground than you thought.
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Do you got a replay?
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Mexico City airport is at about 7300ft with mountains surrounding the airport. You most likely crashed into a mountain.
The altitude you were looking at is MSL (mean sea Level) not AGL (Above ground level). Basically, you were 8000ft above the sea, but not 8000ft above the ground
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Yes, a replay would be extremely helpful!
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Looking at the charts, the sector safe altitudes around the MEX VOR (on the airport) are 12K-nearly 15K to the northwest side and up to 19K and change to the southeast
The flights from KORD come into MMMX via the AVSAR4A and transition to the SLM VOR to be between 13K and 16K and 220kt before vectors to final.
In your case, 8K is 4000’ below sector safe meaning 💥
The moral of the story is-USE THE CHARTS!
They’ll keep you out of trouble altitude wise!
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Upon further investigation-there’s terrain above 10K roughly in the direction you were coming in from in the approach areas of either runway and you’ll notice that glide slope intercept for RWY23 is 8669’ or 1353’ above ground level
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That seems actually pretty accurate glancing at the replay. I must have accidentally set my descent to 1100 ft per minute and it looks like the tail of the plane hit into a mountain and I lost control of the plane.
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Don’t worry we’ve all been there at some point.
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I struggle with altitude so this will be useful. Thank you!
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Also check the altitude of your airport you are landing at by taping it in the in game map
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That’s done excellent chart reading.
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The charts are generally all available-they’re not there for no reason-they’ll keep you out of harms way altitude wise in addition to assisting with traffic flow.
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Yeah you’re absolutely right, but for me, it’s complex because I don’t yet know about it, neither have I ever studied it. So yeah when your portrayed it well I was kinda impressed to be hoenst. Well now I know who to contact to learn reading charts. :P
Cheers!!
Also don’t forget to click on the airport for METAR and airport elevation before approach
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@samuel_48 check this out here for a beginners guide. On our channel are more tutorial videos and streams etc.
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