Simubuild A340-600

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).

Simubuild was a developer back in 2002 with only a short lifetime. Their website has been closed for years now. They developed the two longest Airbus A340's: The A340-500 and -600.

Originally developed for FS2002, this A340-600 still looks nice and works in FS2004 and FSX as well. There is no virtual cockpit included, but a virtual passenger cabin instead. The wings are visible from the virtual cabin, so you can look out a window like a passenger would. The main landing gear is sinking into the runway when landing. This is a common problem in FS2004 for a main landing gear sets with four-wheel bogies or more. In this case the result is realistic behaviour of the landing gear, but the lower wheels sink into the ground first.




--