An Open Letter to the Flight Sim Community - Where’s the A220?
Ever since I re-entered the flight simulation community in 2019 after a four year hiatus, a question has been constantly on my mind, one that actually needs to be answered.
Why isn't there a study-level or at least a high quality Airbus A220 (formerly Bombardier CSeries) aircraft for any simulator variant? Yes, there is the Virtualcol A220, but it's payload restricted and the flight dynamics are questionable, and it's for a simulator platform that is going the way of the dodo bird (Prepar3D).
There have been other proposed/in-development versions of the aircraft but so far nothing concrete has materialized. This is disappointing as there are several hundred A220s in service and they are rapidly replacing older Embraer jets with many airlines, JetBlue and Breeze to name just two.
Is it a matter of Airbus being a stickler about licensing the A220? Is it like the Embraer jets, which only recently have had good models come out for the entire family and in part because the simulator market seems to have an attraction to long-haul aircraft? This is something that has been on my mind quite a bit, and I wish I had some sort of answer because it's hard to fly real-world airline routes without the accurate equipment type.