Your destination is set, you plan your route, pick your plane, perhaps speaking to ground control for taxi clearance, and you are ‘ready to go’. But where are your passengers? In your imagination of course, along with your crew and co-pilot.

Have you ever thought Flight Simulator is devoid of purpose? If you have, then you need FSPassengers 2004!

This small piece of software clamps onto Flight Simulator 2004 and is available to buy online as a download. Installation is simple and fully automatic, and the demo version comes fully functional, but restricts departures solely to San Francisco; enabling all to ‘try before they buy’. If you decide to unlock FSPassengers, then an automated website will take your card details and send you a serial number and user name via email. Updates are free, as this is still a developing piece of software.

To say this is the most anticipated add-on ever to compliment FS 2004 is an understatement. There was a massive fan base already waiting in the wings to snap it up long before its developer made available the first release. All this hype, I am pleased to say, is for good reason. FSPassengers has been worth the wait!

So, what will FSPassengers do that FS2004 doesn’t do already?

Put simply, your flight simming “career” will never be the same again, for that is essentially what FSPassengers does; enables you to make a career out of sim flying. FSPassengers enables you to create virtual airlines and buy a fleet of virtual planes. In order to maintain these, you will need to generate income from your flights, and build up your airline with more planes and an excellent reputation for safety and customer service. To that end you must create pilots and train them to fly progressively larger planes to enable your airline to grow.

FSPassengers does not alter or provide any fancy graphics, it only interfaces with you, the user, and starts this with a simple menu that slots into your FS2004 toolbar. From here in, a simple, logical format FSPassengers presents all its functions and features. You start by creating a company, a pilot and buying a plane. Here you can set scenarios for your created airline relating to the difficulty level you choose. You even have to set the service quality level that your virtual passengers will enjoy, or put up with, on your fare paying flights.

You load passengers at the gate, passenger numbers will depend on your company reputation and how many flights your company has made from the airport you are departing from. You can load passengers in real time, and there are sound effects in the cabin as your passenger’s board. When all are aboard it’s time to close the door. Now it is over to your flight crew to announce the flight, and make the safety checks. A nice addition worth a mention here are the extra sounds supplied in the cockpit; co-pilot sound effects are supplied, as are new cabin and engine sounds.

It is your responsibility to set the seatbelt signs, and you can play music while taxiing to keep your passengers calm. Once you are cleared for takeoff make sure you fly by the book, since all of your actions are being logged. Your passengers satisfaction is now of utmost importance. Once you are at your cruising altitude, you can serve drinks, sandwiches, hot food, and play in-flight movies. All these things are an essential part of ensuring 100% customer satisfaction.

A rough landing will annoy your passengers, as well as damage your plane! Any damage will need to be fixed before you can fly that plane again, and that will cost you money, which is no good for your profits!

During the flight you have access a small dialog box that sits in an inconspicuous place of your choice and lets you know if your passengers are happy or hungry, and what your crew are up to. You also have access to a more comprehensive in-flight report which details in addition to that available on the mini-report, a wealth of information about your plane and statistics about your flight.

After you have landed and unloaded your passengers, a more detailed end-of-flight report is displayed; you receive points here for your efforts, negative points for a poor flight and positive points for arriving on time, or a nice landing, etc. These points, along with flying time, enable your pilot to progress toward the next stage in their aviation career. This report also tells you how much revenue your flight generated, and breaks down all the costs, displaying them clearly so that they are easy to understand. So you can check your progress, these logs are saved and show all data for your previous flights. You can upload these onto the FSPassengers website for others to look at, or laugh at, as the case may be.

There is a nice feature on this add-on too: enabling random failures. These offer more than FS offers by default, and if you fly badly the parts of your plane will break off, and start to fail. For instance, if you forget to retract your flaps on takeoff, your co-pilot will inform you that “we’ve exceeded max flap air speed and they are frozen”. You will not be able to use them to land, which will mean a difficult landing, and an expensive repair!

Poor flying can also make your passengers literally scream, and yes, you can hear them. If you have to declare an emergency because of a genuine failure, good flying will also get you a round of applause, if you successfully land.

As with all developing software, there are flaws. At present – if you are impatient and use time acceleration, switched up to 16X speed will result in FS 2004 crashing (usually when you are 10 hours into a 12 hour flight). Another thing that spoiled my enjoyment of this add-on was the jumpy co-pilot. Sometimes he gets just a little too scared, and even on a perfectly acceptable landing says random things like “what are you doing?” and “we’re gonna crash!” The other complaint I have is about the repetitive cabin announcements – there could have been a few more variations recorded, and this would have made the illusion generated by FSPassengers feel more real. There are other small bugs, but these are being fixed and will be made available for free download on new releases as the software is added to.

I cannot let these minor flaws cloud my judgement though. This little piece of software (only 26Mb) adds so much to FS 2004 that you positively cannot ignore it. It is a must buy for all those who are serious about their Flight Simulator. You really must discover the capabilities and all the features this add-on has to offer yourself, as it can be tweaked and tuned, so you can get exactly what you want out of the FSPassengers experience.

Once you have it installed FSPassengers you don’t have to use it either. The way it operates means you can use FS 2004 on its own, and add the realism of FSPassengers when you feel like it.

Support for this software is good, and it uses a forum based enquiry system enabling users to exchange useful tips, tricks and even answer each others’ technical queries. This does not mean the developers take a back seat. Dan, the programmer, often helps personally and adds valuable support to the forum, as do the beta testers and moderators.