Go Find The Grand Canyon In Microsoft Flight Sim They Said, It’ll Be Easy They Said

Layovers are nothing compared to internet disconnects and poorly planned flight paths

I finally saw the Grand Canyon. It was cool. It wasn’t worth it.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been playing Microsoft Flight Simulator in bite-sized sessions, usually a route or two per day. Most of my flights have gone down at night—after work, and after the sun had set. Due to Flight Sim’s real-time telemetry, that’s limited travel to the other side of the globe, if I want to actually do any daytime digital sight-seeing. (Thanks a lot, hemispheres!) But last night, I learned that you can customize the specific time of day you fly, thus opening up a whole world—or, well, half of one—of possibilities.

I first flew over San Francisco at sunset, because obviously. Then, one of my roommates suggested I check out the Grand Canyon. It’s pretty cool, according to him and only him, and I haven’t had the good fortune to see it IRL. Given the nature of the pandemic, it might be a long, long while before I can.

First, I flew out of Sedona, partly because I knew it was geographically close to the Grand Canyon and partly because the airport’s Flight Sim listing literally says “Grand Canyon.” Partway through the flight, my AOA (I don’t know what that means and refuse to learn) started to inexplicably and relentlessly beep whenever I pitched above 0 degrees. In other words, to shut the damn thing up, I had to keep my nose angled down. I crashed.

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