Behavior of ai is not always predictable..    ..so the following is based on my experiences, not necessarily fixed 'rules'.

1) If parking is not available, the typical behavior is to land at the destination, stall on the runway and then disappear.

3) Slider shouldn't make a difference. It effects the number of ai spawned. not their behavior, at least not after takeoff.

2) This might be possible. Nearly all WoAI flight plans use a fixed arrival time at the gate. The in-flight time may be unrealistic, compared to the design cruise speed of the FS model. This might cause them to jump ahead if they get to far behind the schedule, particularly if late departure is involved.

Default flight plans are calculated on the design cruise speed so there should be no need to jump ahead. Maybe try following  a default flight and see if the same thing happens.

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AI 'pilots' are a very cautious lot. They do not like player aircraft flying to close, particularly during departure and arrival manuvers. If you are to close (within a mile or two) they may not make their turns to stay on course. If they are 'forced' to far off course they will eventually disappear.

What sim version are you using?  Most of the above is based on following ai on 'calculated arrival' flight plans in FS9. I'll have to experiment with the WoAI 'fixed arrival' flight plans in FSX.

Dave

It's a puzzlement....got me stumped.  

I did 2 FS9 flights following aircraft on WoAI flightplans, one following an 'on time' flight, the other following a 10 minute delayed flight. I was able to follow both flights for over an hour (they didn't disappear, I just quit). They were both airliners, MidEx b717's.

Are you relying on the ai aircraft labels to follow the ai?  Lables will disappear at 10nm. That doesn't mean the planes are gone.  If you can catch up, the lables will reappear.

A tool that might help is the FS2004 Traffic Toolbox SDK, available here-http://scenery.org/tutorials_fs2k4_SDK.htm. Once installed the Traffic Toolbox>Explorer, available from the Alt menu, lists all active ai.  If an ai flight is terminated it will drop from the list. Plus there are some other 'neat' things you can do with ai aircraft. One of them is, you can have an ai fly any of your saved flight plans, including waypoints, rather than the normal ai 'direct to' flight plans.

OK that traffictoolkit answered some questions, some airplanes disappear after takeoff, only ones that didnt were ones who were going back into the pattern, MWAI jets.  Some airlines were in the air en route, but looked like ones who were on approach to the airports in the area.

A quote from Lee Swordy's Traffic Tools v2.0 help file:

"......Your computer is only actually ‘flying’ the AI aircraft that are in an ‘AI active zone’ around your current location, so it may only have to deal with a few dozen aircraft that are in that zone at any given time, although this can exceed 100 in dense traffic areas. The rest of the AI flights are not activated unless their flight paths cross into this zone, or you move and push the zone over their projected flight paths. When an AI aircraft leaves this zone it is essentially ‘extinguished’.

FS divides the world into a grid of sectors, approximately 40 mile rectangles. The traffic file contains a massive matrix that specifies exactly which flights are supposed to be in each sector at any given time. The AI active zone consists of the sector you are currently in and the sectors on all adjacent sides, for a block of nine sectors. The program only flies the AI traffic in those nine sectors (an approximately 120 mile rectangle)."

Therefore, you will see ai appear and disappear from the Explorer list as they enter and leave 'active zone'. Altitude has no effect.

Can you name one of the MAIW packages whose aircraft are disappearing? I could chek it out and see if I get the same effect.

Yes, as you're flying with them, they shouldn't disappear.

Is that the only ones that disappear?

I'll download it, and check it out.

Ok i figured out the issue, now is there a way to fix it! 

Like was said before airplanes disappear after they are 10NM for your  "START Location".  is there a way to to change your start location as you are flying, like it continuously restarts your starting location as you are flying.  Instead of keeping where you started as your default location.  this is why they are disappearing so its not really a big issue.  But i was just wondering if there is a way to fix this problem.

Welcome to the V Opa! Glad you could make it! 

Phantom,

I've never had any problems following ai flights from start to finish.

I installed the Meridian Hawks pack. I followed the flight of Bobcats 11, 12 and 13 from Meridian to Cherry Point (KNKT), 600nm, from takeoff to landing.

Quote:


They only disappear (no longer visible) at 10mi, but they are still active until they leave the active area (120mi rectangle centered on your aircraft). The active area does move with your aircraft, therefore any ai that stay within that area  as you fly, should remain visible if within 10mi, or remain on the active list in Traffic Toolbox Explorer.

One problem that can happen when following ai, is as I mentioned before: "AI 'pilots' are a very cautious lot. They do not like player aircraft flying to close, particularly during departure and arrival manuvers. If you are to close (within a mile or two) they may not make their turns to stay on course. If they are 'forced' to far off course they will eventually disappear."

So during departure and arrival, you should stay well clear, 1mi or more, so that the ai can comply with atc of fp vectoring. Once the ai is 'on course' you can close in.  

Dave