The Strip

It had been a while since my last flight on the other side of the Pond, in Northern America.

Real world flight, UAL 460 from San Francisco to Las Vegas was with the PSS 757-200 per the real life aircraft.

The route was taken directly from flightaware:

Porte3 CZQ BIH LIDAT J92 BTY Sunst2

Cruise altitude for today was FL350

Can we go now?


The weather at San Fran was light winds from the east, calm to be more precise with few clouds at 4500 and 11C. I was expecting runway 10R for departure but somehow FS has assigned 28L/R, and btw, I did reset AI after refreshing the weather in AS. Weird...

My preflight took around 15 minutes as usual, not to much data to enter for the 450NM or so flight. Heavy tailwinds were on the menu so I was expecting the flight time to be around an hour.

Arrivals and departures


KSFO was bustling with evening traffic, all of the majors coming and going. I was lucky to witness a simultaneous arrival and departure (see above shot).

The United terminal happened to be on the other side of the airport so taxi time was long, too long to my liking.

Lining up, 28L


The Porte3 departure from 28L takes you back inland, to waypoint wages which is the exit gate of the SID.

Cruise flight was uneventful and short, plus, being dark there wasn't much to see either.

Approach into Las Vegas was exciting as I hadn't ever flown into KLAS before in FS. I was really curious about how the Strip was done.

Las Vegas to the left


The Sunst2 RNAV arrival takes you to the south of the airport where you fly the downwind leg for runways 25L/R. If I'm not mistaken, KLAS is very much like KLAX in terms of runway usage. Mostly 25L/R are used.

The southerly winds were blowing steadily at 5 knots with few clouds at 11000 and 8C.

Night flying rules


Night flying, especially the approach phase is extremely rewarding. Every single time the runways lights as in the shot above takes my breath away... Every final approach at night is a great experience.

My landing was slightly off centerline, a tad to the right but was still quite smooth. My taxi time back to the gate was long here as well.

The Strip


An hour and 27 minutes added to log, this one included we should be at 91 with Al. 9 to go to reach our 100 mark. 9 more flights to complete in 24 days. Only a couple of leg series each and we're there.

It should be possible.

Before I wrap it up, I'd like to point out Al's Las Vegas flight in 2009 with the same aircraft here.

As Iceland is the last visitor country on my blog, a flight over there might be in order.


Thanks for viewing