Overland A340-200

The Airbus A340 is a four-engined, long haul wide-body commercial passenger jet aircraft. Airbus launched the A340 in June 1987 in parallel with the A330, as a single aircraft program. Both aircraft share the same wing and similar fuselage structure, and borrow heavily from the advanced avionics and composite structure technology developed for the A320. The A340-300 first flew in 1991 and entered service with Lufthansa and Air France in March 1993. The A340 is a competitor of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and the Boeing 777. It seats between 261 and 380 passengers, and has a range between 6,700 and 9,000 NM. The CFM International CFM56-5C4 engines are the only engine choice for the -200 and -300 variants.

The -500 and -600 variants are powered by the Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engines. The A340-500 is the longest-range variant and can fly 313 passengers in a three-class cabin layout over 8,650 nm (16,020 km). The A340-600 is with a length of 75,30 meter almost 5 meter longer than the Boeing 747-400 and with that the longest passenger aircraft in the world. It was designed as an early generation 747 replacement. The A340-600 flies 380 passengers in a three-class cabin layout (419 in 2 class) over 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 km).

Simmer's sky is a label of the japanese company Overland Co.,Ltd. Along with a few other products, they sell the Fly into the sky! package, which contains many Airbus and Boeing aircraft.

This Airbus A340-200 is a beautiful designed aircraft, the shape of the fuselage represents the A340-200 very well. The Fly into the sky! package contains only a Lufthansa livery for the A340-200, but there are many beautiful paints downloadable from websites like AVSIM. The 2d panel is framerate friendly, but doesn't have a FMC. For full IFR flights, you need to use the default Carmin GPS unit. ILS Approaches are no problem, just enter the course/ILS frequency and use the LOC and APPR buttons. The virtual cockpit is a bit simple, only the most important systems are modelled. But it looks nice and is framerate friendly too. There is also a wingview model for even better framerates.

The flightdynamics are ok, but the ground effect is minimal, which can result in bumpy landings due to the little effect of the flare. Another thing is the main landing gear. Like almost all other overland aircraft, the main landing gear seems to float for a bit over the runway upon landing and finally sinks to the ground when rolling out. This is a common problem in FS, especially landing gear sets with four-wheel bogies or even more wheels. The wingflex is lift based, which is great, because the wings bend up and down in turbulent weather.

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