As an active member of the community, I’d like to share a concern that I believe many of us feel. While I truly appreciate the effort and quality that goes into each aircraft, it’s hard not to notice the long delay between the initial announcement of the A320neo and its actual release.
The 737 MAX was officially announced in April 2024 and released just 8 months later in December 2024 — a pretty efficient timeline. Meanwhile, the A320neo was first announced on September 27, 2024 , and now we’re in June 2025**, 9 months later, with no confirmed release date and no clear horizon in sight.
You also mentioned during that time that you were developing a new internal tool to speed up aircraft production. But honestly, from the outside, it feels like things are moving slower, not faster.
Also, many of us are asking: why announce a new aircraft so far in advance if the release is still a long way off? Most of the community is growing increasingly impatient, and that’s clear from the forum and social media comments.
That said, I really hope the final product lives up to the long wait and high expectations. Thanks for all your work, and for listening to the feedback of those who fly daily on the platform.
Many factors may contribute to that. Firstly, we had this competition, in which the winner would be developed first, with the loser being debeloped at a later date.
There have also been other aircraft in the works, such as the reworked Cessna 208, as well as the upcoming PA28s and AT-6 Texan II. Infinite Flight also isn’t just about aircraft, as a new graphics engine is also in the works - the team hoped they could give us a WIP of that in late 2024, but that date has come and gone with no WIP in sight, showing that developnent is no easy task, especially of a leading mobile flight simulator. We’ve also just had AutoPilot+ added, which required a lot of work on the server side, as well as the upcoming fleet feature.
To quote yourself, they’re “developing” it, meaning it may not be fully ready yet, with the PA28s serving as a testbed for these tools, if I recall correctly.
And, lastly, due to popular demand, the A321neo is also being developed in parallel with the A320neo, slowing its development down yet again.
However, I’m sure that the A320neo will be an absolute banger once it comes out, just like any other aircraft the team releases.
We Cannot Rush The Devs Which may cause some Problems Like the MAX 8s Flaps and the Tail too that was released in April and People Saw that and Reported It on Support. I understand it’s taken a long time
I understand rushing development can lead to issues — nobody’s asking for that. But the real frustration comes from how early the A320neo was announced and the lack of meaningful updates since then.
Just as a comparison: Apple announces a new iPhone and launches it within 10–15 days. They manage expectations and deliver quickly. Here, we’re 9 months past the A320neo announcement and still have no cockpit previews, no dev blog updates, no release timeline — just silence.
If the project wasn’t close to release, why announce it so early? And if it’s delayed, at least communicate that clearly. No news leads to more frustration, not less.
Thanks for the detailed response — I fully understand that Infinite Flight is working on multiple fronts: new aircraft, systems like AutoPilot+, backend improvements, a new graphics engine, etc. And I completely respect how complex this platform is for a mobile sim.
That said, none of that changes the original point:
If you know you’ve got a long development cycle ahead, and multiple projects running in parallel, why make a public announcement so far in advance without setting expectations clearly?
It’s not just about “being patient” — it’s about communication and timing. When something is announced publicly, users expect a certain level of follow-up, visibility, or timeline updates. And so far, the A320neo has had almost none of that for 9 months.
Saying “development is hard” is valid — but that doesn’t mean feedback about early announcements with no follow-through is invalid. We just want transparency, not silence.
Again, it was confirmed that the A320neo would come at some point back in March 2024, via the competition I linked above. Given all I’ve mentioned, I’d say we’ve been getting a decent amount of WIPs of the aircraft. Now, try and picture what it would’ve been like if it was announced in that competition, lost to the MAX (as it happened), but no public announcement of it was made since.
Thanks for this question! You’ve raised a great point. @AvioesEJogos has raised some great and accurate points (they’ve been paying attention for a while now)! As part of the contest between the MAX and NEO (which the MAX won), we also announced that the runner-up would be added next. During this time, we’ve made a major shift in how our aircraft are built.
As part of the aircraft development pipeline, we’re working with new 3D artists, who, as we’ve mentioned, will significantly accelerate our aircraft development. This is the ultimate goal. However, this change does mean that the NEO family will take longer to ship. On that note, we’ve discovered it’s advantageous to build the larger of the two planned NEO aircraft first, so it will probably make sense to ship it first as well. This means the 321NEO will likely come before the 320NEO. Our conservative internal target for the 321NEO is Q1 2026. This allows for some fine-tuning of our new aircraft pipeline process with our new partner.
The test we did with this new partner was with the Piper PA-28, which is nearing completion. We hope to share more on that soon, and it will ship first.
In the meantime, we’ve been addressing a long list of smaller aircraft models and livery issues across our fleet. Many of these will make their way into our next major release.
We understand that the Airbus fans are anxious to get into the brand new NEOs, and so are we! We thank you for your patience as we roll out this new workflow. We’re confident that it will pay off for everyone in the end.
I’m happy to answer questions if you have them.
Cheers!
PS…
This is something we’ve wrestled with many times. If we waited 9 months (because aircraft take a long time to model properly, which goes for any 3D shop for desktop sims as well) to announce, it would be bad news
More people working on it. A common frustration for people is that we’re a small team and that we should put more resources into aircraft dev. We are doing that.
No. Since we’ll be well off and running with this new dev pipeline by then, you should see the 787 come fairly quickly after the NEO (meaning, more quickly than it usually would).
Thanks so much for the detailed explanation and for taking the time to update us — it’s genuinely appreciated, and it’s good to have a better understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes.
That said, I do feel that the early announcement of the A320neo, especially without a clear timeline, has led to some understandable frustration in the community. When something is announced, even with no release date, it naturally raises expectations.
I completely respect the complexity of the work involved, and I’m excited to see what this new development pipeline will bring. Hopefully, future announcements will come with a bit more timing clarity, just to help manage expectations more effectively.
Thanks again for the transparency and for engaging with us!
