As a computer gamer and aviation geek, Microsoft Flight Simulator is a game I spent many hours on when I was a teenager. Flying around passed the time nicely when I wanted to chill out. Planes are quite relaxing, after all!

The last version was Flight Simulator X in 2006, so the news that a new Flight Simulator is coming out on 18 August 2020 has been well received by fans. What is great is that certain airports are getting a special level of detail added from the beginning.

Microsoft Flight Simulator Airports

All airports around the world are featured in the programme. When I say all, I mean every single airport in the world will be in it. This is not unusual, it was like that before as well.


The ones with special level of detail mean accurate surrounding scenery and buildings have been created. These airports are both large well known airports and smaller facilities. Los Angeles LAX, New York JFK, Sydney, Paris CDG, Seattle, Orlando and Tokyo HND are some of the majors.


For the more unusual airports, places like Saint Barthélemy (St. Barts) in the Caribbean, Innsbruck in Austria, Tegucigalpa in Honduras and Lukla Tenzing in Nepal have been chosen. These airports have especially scenic or death defying runways, which should be fun to try in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

And You Mentioned Donegal in Ireland?

Donegal Airport lies beside Carrickfinn Beach in the far northern region of Ireland, which helps to explain where it’s airport code of CFN comes from. It takes slightly under an hour to fly between Dublin and Donegal.


The airport was voted as having the second most scenic approach in the world in 2017. You can get a feel for it in a video I took the same year when flying out of the airport.

Overall Thoughts

It is great to see Donegal included in the new Flight Sim. The choice of the extra detail airports is excellent, as it will provide some real eye candy for arm chair pilots around the world.

For what it’s worth, the number one voted most scenic approach was Saba in the Caribbean, which unsurprisingly also features with the expanded detail in the software. Either way, the software is almost photo realistic, as the combination of images in this article show.

Have you ever played Microsoft Flight Simulator before? Are you planning to get it this time around? What do you think of the screenshots? Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image by Donegal Airport on Facebook.
Screenshots via Microsoft.
Lukla runway by Moralist via Wikimedia Commons.