Complete:
PMDG Beech 1900D
Dream wings Dash 8-200
POSKY Embraer E135
Feelthere Embraer 135
POSKY Embraer 145
Feelthere Embraer E145
Feelthere Embraer E170

Still to go:
Erick Cantu Embraer 120
Freeware Beech 1900D
Dream wings Embraer E170
Dream wings Dash8-400
POSKY CRJ-200
Feelthere CRJ-200
POSKY CRJ-700
Feelthere CRJ-700

As you can see, I am almost 50% complete. I think it will take me another two weeks to complete. I am then going to look into the AI traffic possibilities. No promises on that, the planes are easy, it is the traffic compiling that it really tough. I do not have any plans on adding any aircraft other than the Dash 8-400 that David Webb (Fleet Genius) is working on fixing up.

I would like to have the E120 done this weekend, but only time will tell, the weekend is pretty booked right now.

Thank you and have a great flight!

Just to name a few with the “simple” scheme,

United / Continental
Delta Airlines
US Airways
AMERICAN Airlines (they don’t really even paint them)
Westjet (perhaps the sexiest 737′s in the sky)

And now Great Lakes Express

I am still debating on if I should color the tail or not, I am leaning towards what we see is what we get, or got…

Next up, E170

I recently was looking around for a good Dash 8-400 model, specifically the .air file. This is where most of the technical stuff for the operation of the plane is written. I knew that Premier Aircraft Design made a Dash 8-400 and I wanted to try the flight dynamics and see if it was better than what I have in the old Dreamwings model. Well I come to find out they have ceased operations. So, Dreamwings, Project Open Sky (POSKY) and now Premier Aircraft Design have stopped developing aircraft.

I suppose they have there reasons, but here is why this hurts the FS community, the pay-ware developers no longer have to make things better than the free-ware developers.

Keeping PMDG and Captain Sim separate, they are on there own level, I speak specifically of Wilco / Feelthere. They recently released what they call the 737 Evolution. WOW, it is really crap compare to the old version. Wouldn’t you think it would be an improvement? The virtual cockpit looks like FS9, the physical model is without any detail and the flight dynamics are average at best. Now let’s take a look at the CRJ package, the 200 is fine, but the CRJ-700, has a huge flaw when using a throttle. Something to do with the plane being modeled with four engines when it actually has two and the throttle cannot control that… HUH??? So I read that there is a modification you can make in the FSUIPC to make it work… HUH??? Sorry, I expect a little more out of a plane I paid 30 bucks for, shame on you Feelthere! I move on to the E170, not a bad plane, good flight dynamics and a fairly good model. I am wondering though, did anyone at Feelthere ever look at a real E170? The plane sits to high, the engines are to high, the aircraft is not modeled correctly.

I am going to keep both the Embraer and Bombardier aircraft, neither one is great but I feel the Embraer is a better designed airplane, this would be the V2 version of the E145 and E135.

I recently bought a new computer, a super computer if I can call it that. It will be a super computer for at lease 60 minutes before it is out dated. This is a very expensive rig that I purchased just to run FSX (again), When I say it, it doesn’t sound very good. I bought a super computer to run a simulator that is no longer manufactured, hmmmm stupid move? YES! Then why? Brain fart…

I looked at X-Plane, it may still be a reasonable alternative down the line, they need more planes to get me hooked:

CRJ-200
CRJ-700
Dash 8-200
Dash 8-400
Beech 1900D
Boeing 737-600
Boeing 737-700
Boeing 757-200

Just to name a few (or 8).

I can fly any general aviation planes I want in FSX, for me though, I need good complex pay ware aircraft that I can paint with relative ease. Feelthere needs to get that part right as well! McPhat I am not!

I will be working on the PMDG very soon, the 737-600, 737-700 and the 737-800 ALL in both Premier North AND Premier West colors.

We are a small regional carrier, (Great Lakes Express that is) and we don’t have large planes to connect our hubs. I like to look at it this way, take a map and draw a circle around each of our hubs approximately 300 miles in diameter. That is our initial market. Then make a 600 mile circle and that is our secondary market. Now we could fly from Cleveland to destinations like Norfolk or Richmond. But the flights get long and we begin to overburden our hub. From Washington these are easy flights to fly, short and economical. Look at the size of our fleet, we have a lot of aircraft, all flying to smaller destinations. Our competition is flying a lot of these routes on Airbus and Boeing aircraft, we will continue to focus on the larger Bombardier on these routes. That is what we are good at. I now like our hub selection a lot, we target very important markets and our hubs (except Boston) are relatively small airports, compared to O’Hare or Atlanta. This helps us get in and out quick which is important with our typical 30 minute ground operations.

I could see in the future yet another hub, maybe not on the East Coast but further south. It will not happen any time soon, but I am always thinking…

This expansion took some planning but I think you will enjoy the selection here. I have some work to do on the hub pages yet, but the “meat” of the hub is up and running (schedules and fleet). I ran a hub and spoke system with these two hubs, our main traffic with the other hubs is mainly between the hub and our destinations. We don’t seem to utilize the point to point as much as I thought but it doesn’t matter, both of the new hubs are a blast to fly into.

Thank You for your support and again, welcome to the East Coast.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to respond here or send me an email, paulherman@gleairlines.com

Thank you for flying Great Lakes Express… And enjoy your flight.

Boston Logan

Reagan National Airport

We wont be adding the A380 but the Beech has some potential…