Your first flight

Your first flight walks you through the whole loop once: pick an aircraft, load cargo, fuel up, fly it in the simulator and get paid. Every other page in Flying goes deeper into one of these steps.

Before you start

You need three things:

A Pilops account. See Creating your account.
An aircraft. New pilots get a free Cessna 172 Skyhawk and a free small hangar at the airport chosen during Onboarding. That airport cannot be changed later, so pick one you actually want to fly from.
The Pilops Client installed on the same Windows PC that runs Microsoft Flight Simulator (2020 or 2024). See Installing the Pilops Client.

The free aircraft is only offered to brand-new pilots (level 1, no flight hours). If you skipped it, you can still buy or rent an aircraft. See Buying an aircraft and Renting an aircraft.

Step 1: choose the aircraft

Open New Flight in the app. You will see your aircraft with their Passengers Capacity and Cargo Capacity. Click one to start a flight with it. The app then opens the Active Flight page, a four-step checklist: Aircraft → Cargo → Fuel → Confirm.

Things that stop you here:

You already have an active flight. You can only prepare one flight at a time. Finish or cancel the other one first.
Aircraft is currently in use or in maintenance. Pick another aircraft, or wait. See Maintenance.
Aircraft rental period has expired. Renew the rental or use another aircraft.

If you fly a company aircraft, the step tells you which company you are operating for. Company aircraft can only fly inside the company's operating area. See Hubs and operating area.

Step 2: load cargo and passengers

The Cargo step lists every job available at your current airport. Each card shows what it is (a cargo item or a group of passengers), the destination airport, how much it pays in P$, the distance in nautical miles and the weight.

Use the toggles at the top to sort the list:

Highest Payment: best-paying jobs first. Good when you are starting out.
Shortest Distance: quick hops.
Fits Capacity: only jobs that still fit in the aircraft.
Lowest Weight: useful when you want to keep room for fuel.

Click Add to put a job on board. The Payload Summary on the side groups the load by destination and shows the Total Revenue you can expect. The capacity bars for Cargo, Passengers and Fuel fill up as you add things.

A few rules worth knowing:

Cargo, passengers and fuel share the same weight budget. Every pound of cargo is a pound of fuel you cannot carry.
A job can be Blocked when you have no seats left, no weight left, or someone else is already carrying it. Jobs are first come, first served: if another pilot books a job before you, the app removes it from your load and tells you.
You can carry jobs for several destinations in one flight. Cargo whose destination you do not reach is unloaded at the airport where you stop and waits there for up to 7 days, so you or any other pilot can pick it up again. See Cargo and passengers.
Once the flight has started in the simulator, the load is locked.

For your first flight, a short hop with a couple of passengers and a light package is plenty. Pick a destination airport you know how to find.

Step 3: fuel

The Fuel step shows the fuel already on board and a slider to add or remove fuel, in the weight unit you chose in Settings (lbs or kg). The price per unit depends on the aircraft's fuel type: AvGas for pistons, Jet-A1 for turbines. See Fuel.

The slider stops at whichever comes first: the tank capacity or the weight left after cargo. If you see Maximum aircraft weight limit reached, remove some cargo or accept less fuel.

Click Next and confirm the refuel. Fuel is paid immediately from your personal account, or from the company account if the company allows it. Removing fuel costs nothing, but you do not get the money back.

Plan for the trip plus a reserve. Running dry in the simulator ends badly, and the client cancels a flight if fuel appears from nowhere mid-flight.

Step 4: confirm

The Confirm step shows the Estimated Profit for the load you built, the configured load by destination, the fuel level and the aircraft. There is no "start" button here on purpose: the flight starts from the Pilops Client, not from the web app.

Leave this page as it is and switch to the client.

Flying in the simulator

Start Microsoft Flight Simulator and load a free flight at the origin airport of your Pilops flight, using the same aircraft type you chose in Pilops. Park at a gate or ramp with the aircraft stopped.
Open the Pilops Client and sign in. It shows your prepared flight on the Preflight screen.
Click I'm ready to connect. The client checks that it found the simulator, that you are in the right aircraft, at the right airport and stopped. If something is off it tells you exactly what, for example You are in a wrong airport or You have selected a wrong aircraft.
Fly. The client follows the flight through four states: Boarding (parked), Taxing (moving on the ground), In Flight and Landed. Your position shows up live on the Dashboard map for every other pilot.
After landing, taxi to your parking spot, stop the aircraft and click Finish and save flight in the client. The aircraft must be fully stopped.

Pilops decides where you landed by looking for the airport closest to where you stopped. Cargo and passengers bound for that airport are delivered and paid; anything else is unloaded there and waits for a later flight.

While a flight is being tracked, keep these in mind. Each one cancels the flight on the spot, with no partial credit:

Do not use slew, teleport or the MSFS replay. The client cancels the flight if the aircraft jumps more than 2 nautical miles between two readings. Replay rewinds and then snaps the aircraft forward, which looks exactly like a teleport.
Keep the simulation rate at 1x. Changing sim rate cancels the flight.
Do not add fuel in the simulator. Fuel that appears in the tanks mid-flight cancels the flight. Refuel in Pilops before you connect.
Pausing the simulator is fine. Fuel and time are not counted while paused.

A hard landing does not cancel anything, but it costs you. See Landing score.

Landing and getting paid

When the flight is saved, the client shows the result and the app adds it to your Flight history. The Flight Detail page breaks it down:

Earnings: the profit in P$ and the experience gained in XP.
Fee Breakdown: the flight fee, 10% of what the jobs paid, already deducted from the profit. See Fees.
Landing Performance: the final score with G-force on touchdown, pitch, bank and vertical speed.
Flight Alerts: anything the client flagged during the flight, such as excessive G-force or a poor landing.

XP raises your level and your rank. See Levels and XP. Flying again tomorrow starts a Flight streak that adds a bonus to your deliveries.

That is the whole loop. From here, most pilots save up for a bigger aircraft, look for a busier airport, or rent a stand and start building Routes.

Common problems

The client says "No instance of Flight Simulator was found": Start the simulator first and load into a flight before clicking I'm ready to connect. On the main menu the simulator is not yet "flying", so there is nothing to connect to.

"You are in a wrong airport" but I am at the right one: The client resolves the airport from your position. Make sure you loaded the flight at the airport itself, not at a nearby airstrip, and that the ICAO in Pilops matches.

My flight was cancelled with "changed aircraft position": Almost always the MSFS replay, slew mode or a teleport in the map. The flight cannot be recovered. Plan it again and avoid replay while tracking.

My flight was cancelled by itself hours later: A flight that has started but stops sending data is cancelled after 24 hours. A prepared flight that never started is cancelled after 24 hours for company aircraft and after 7 days for personal aircraft. The cargo goes back to the pool. See Flight cancellation.

I cannot change the cargo any more: The load locks when the flight starts in the simulator. Cancel the flight if you really need to change it.

The job I wanted shows "Blocked": Either it does not fit (seats or weight) or another pilot is already carrying it. Jobs are shared by everyone at that airport.