We had a request for information on the popular airports, so here’s a small addendum to the usage data from a couple weeks ago. We don’t currently track whether the airport is a default, Gateway airport or an add on, but we do have it on our radar to track the most popular add ons in the future.
We’ve filtered out demo users again, and this information is for the entire life of X-Plane 11 (1 Nov 2016 to 21 Nov 2017) since we’ve never published airport data before. I’ve only pulled the top 50 airports for this list, but we track 11,281 locations.
| Start location | % of total |
|---|---|
| KSEA | 3.31% |
| KLAX | 1.86% |
| E46 | 1.48% |
| KJFK | 1.40% |
| EGLL | 1.38% |
| KSFO | 1.24% |
| LOWI | 1.17% |
| EDDF | 1.04% |
| KLGA | 0.94% |
| LFMN | 0.86% |
| PMDY | 0.84% |
| KSAN | 0.83% |
| LSZH | 0.83% |
| KBOS | 0.78% |
| EDDM | 0.70% |
| EHAM | 0.70% |
| KMIA | 0.66% |
| TNCM | 0.62% |
| EGCC | 0.61% |
| YSSY | 0.61% |
| EDDH | 0.60% |
| EGKK | 0.59% |
| LFPG | 0.57% |
| LEBL | 0.56% |
| KLAS | 0.48% |
| EDDL | 0.47% |
| KORD | 0.47% |
| KATL | 0.47% |
| KPHX | 0.43% |
| KMCO | 0.42% |
| RJTT | 0.41% |
| PHNL | 0.40% |
| KDEN | 0.40% |
| CYYZ | 0.39% |
| EDDS | 0.38% |
| KEWR | 0.37% |
| EDDT | 0.37% |
| LFPO | 0.37% |
| LEMD | 0.36% |
| KPDX | 0.35% |
| RJGG | 0.35% |
| Carrier cat shot | 0.34% |
| KSNA | 0.33% |
| LOWW | 0.33% |
| Shuttle | 0.33% |
| LSGG | 0.32% |
| CYUL | 0.32% |
| KSTL | 0.32% |
| YMML | 0.31% |
| ESSA | 0.31% |
| All other starts (11,231) | 85.30% |
Very intersting data! London and Frankfurt high up in the list, very nice.
The big surprise seem “E46″… Is this maybe related to the so called “teleportation bug” of some airplanes (JAR-Design for example). This bug causes the plane to suddenly stop its flight and then be found on the ground – at E46!
JAR-Designs lead developer states that it is not his error: “There is no way to move aircraft in moment. This done by X-Plane. Sadly it is well-know X-Plane 11 issue. Sure, I always send info to LR – no reaction, but BE GREAT if you will send them bug-report too.”
We have an open bug for this (XPD-8476) but so far the bug reports of this have not been very useful. We need very specific reproduction steps, preferably as short & isolated as possible (it’s not a wise use of our limited resources for us to try to reproduce someone’s multiple-hours-long route to *maybe* see the issue at the very end).
We have a potential lead to follow up with after 11.10 is final, but otherwise we’re still looking for someone with short, consistently reproducible steps and the time/inclination to very carefully investigate this issue.
Funny (not “funny-ha-ha”, but “funny-unexpected”) about this is that … initially E46 does indeed seem so … “random”.
If I were to choose an airport where to spawn “out of the blue” (when I have no better options to choose from), I’d more expect something like “A00 – Wade Plantation” or “00C – Animas Air Park” depending on the collation used for ordering the list of airports in memory (I would order them by the ICAO alone).
But … I believe I’ve cracked it … Ordering the list by “primarily by icao *alphabet first, numbers second* … and *then* by name” … E46 *is* the first one on that list 😉
So … whenever XP is “uncertain” where to spawn the user, it does it at the first airport of *that* list 🙂
And … actually … it doesn’t even need to go that far. Just ordering the airports “by name” has “02 Ranch” as the first item on the list. I was overthinking this 😀
E46: O2 Ranch.
Very strange airport to start at for the 3rd busiest airport in X-Plane! It’s just a dirt strip in the desert!
Is this data strictly “start” location as the table says. If this is just starts/departures, I wonder how similar the arrival airport list is. I suspect it is similar.
The data seems to tell that many of simmers fly in their own region with GA planes and only a few number of airliners are flown. The big picture may not change since many people including me appear more interested in flying their own region and sometimes exotic places. Still I suppose this is a contrast to the simmarket for FSX/P3D. There are more simmers flying airliners there.
It is difficult to confirm, but to me this seems to reflect the thought of people about the quality of airliner planes available for x-plane rather than we are more interested in flying small GA planes compared with the simmers in the other market.
What is the definition of ‘start location’? Is this simply where xplane is on boot? Or upon airport relocation? Or when loading a situation?
Wonder how that would look grouping by physical region of the world the user lives in.