Flying Australia: 12 Unmissable Routes for World Update 21

World Update 21 landed on May 5 and took on something no previous update had attempted: an entire continent in one release. Australia arrives with refreshed satellite imagery and elevation data, TIN (photogrammetry) coverage for its cities, 40 new areas of interest, and six hand-crafted airports - Broome (YBRM), Broken Hill (YBHI), Coober Pedy (YCBP), Bathurst (YBTH), RAAF Base Tindal (YPTN) and Lord Howe Island (YLHI). MSFS 2024 pilots also get three discovery flights, five precision landing challenges, two low-altitude challenges and two rally races, and the whole update is free for both MSFS 2024 and 2020.

That is a lot of continent. Australia rewards low-and-slow flying like almost nowhere else - the distances are vast, the emptiness is real, and the coastline is absurd - so here are twelve routes to turn the download into a fortnight of proper flying, roughly ordered from a first evening's hop to expedition class.

The easy wins

1. Sydney Harbour lap. C172 or any slow single · 30 min · Easy. Out of Bankstown (YSBK), east to the coast, then the classic lap: Bondi, the Heads, over the Harbour Bridge and Opera House, north to Palm Beach and home. The TIN rebuild of Sydney makes this the update's showpiece - fly it at golden hour and take the screenshots everyone else is taking.

2. The Whitsundays hop. Cessna 208 or Icon A5 · 45 min · Easy. From Hamilton Island (YBHM) - whose short, sloped runway between hills is an event in itself - island-hop the Whitsundays: Whitehaven Beach's white silica sweep, Hill Inlet, the reef-fringed islets north. One of the update's discovery flights covers this area; fly it free-form afterwards and land back on Hamilton's runway 14 with the terrain funnelling you in.

3. Great Ocean Road. Any GA single · 1 h · Easy. From Moorabbin (YMMB) near Melbourne, southwest along the coast at 1,500 feet: Bells Beach, the Otways, and the Twelve Apostles sea stacks standing in the surf. Straight roads out, spectacular coast back.

4. Bathurst and the Blue Mountains. SR22 or similar · 1 h · Easy. Bathurst (YBTH) is one of the six hand-crafted airports and sits beside the Mount Panorama motor racing circuit - overfly the track, then return east through the Blue Mountains' sandstone walls and canyons toward Sydney. One of the update's rally race challenges lives in this landscape if you want it structured.

The classics

5. The outback mail run. Cessna 210 or PC-12 · 2-3 h · Moderate. Broken Hill (YBHI, hand-crafted) is the historic base of outback mail flying, and the real runs still serve stations and opal towns to its north. Recreate one: Broken Hill → White Cliffs (YWHC) → Tibooburra (YTIB) and back, landing on red-dirt strips serving towns of fifty people. Navigation by ground feature out here is a genuine skill - the features are subtle and the emptiness is not.

6. Coober Pedy arrival. Any GA · 1-2 h from Ayers Rock or 2+ from Adelaide · Moderate. The opal-mining town where everyone lives underground, ringed by thousands of white mine tailings like a lunar settlement. The hand-crafted YCBP sits right beside the moonscape. Pair it with route 7 for the full Red Centre tour.

7. Uluru and the Red Centre. Baron or turboprop · 1.5 h · Moderate. From Alice Springs (YBAS) southwest to Ayers Rock (YAYE): Uluru and the domes of Kata Tjuta rising out of a flat red infinity. Arrive around sunrise or sunset when the rock does its colour change - the update's refreshed terrain colours earn their keep here.

8. Tasmania's wild west. Kodiak or C208 · 1.5 h · Moderate. Hobart (YMHB) to Strahan (YSRN) across the island's uninhabited southwest: Lake Pedder, jagged quartzite ranges, temperate rainforest and a west coast that takes the Southern Ocean's full anger. The most un-Australian corner of Australia, and the best weather-flying on this list - Tasmanian conditions rarely cooperate, which is the point.

The expeditions

9. The Kimberley coast. Cessna 208 on floats if you like · 2-3 h · Challenging. From hand-crafted Broome (YBRM) north over the Dampier Peninsula to the Buccaneer Archipelago: a thousand red-rock islands in turquoise water, the tidal chaos of the Horizontal Falls, King Sound's giant tides. This is remote-area flying for real - plan fuel like it matters. The precision landing challenge back into Broome (a 737, no less) makes a fitting finale.

10. Top End tour: Tindal and Kakadu. Fast and low, or dignified turboprop · 2 h · Challenging. RAAF Base Tindal (YPTN) is the update's military showpiece - home of Australia's F-35s, and one of the precision landing challenges puts you into it in an F/A-18. Arrive however you like, then go north over Katherine Gorge and into Kakadu's escarpment country and wetlands. One of the low-altitude challenges suits this terrain perfectly.

11. Lord Howe Island. Baron, TBM or brave C182 · 1.5-2 h over water · Challenging. Four hundred nautical miles of Tasman Sea from Port Macquarie, then a crescent-shaped island appears with Mount Gower's 2,800-foot wall at one end and a short strip (YLHI, hand-crafted) wedged beside the lagoon. Ocean crossing, no alternates worth the name, terrain on final and wind that bends around the mountain: the most complete test in the update, and the most beautiful.

12. The Cocos run. TBM/PC-12 or an airliner · 3+ h · Expedition. The update's furthest-flung discovery flight covers the Cocos (Keeling) Islands (YPCC) - two coral atolls 1,500 nm northwest of the mainland in the Indian Ocean. Fly the discovery flight, or earn it: the run from Learmonth (YPLM) is a serious overwater leg that ends on an island runway a few metres above the lagoon. Log it and you have landed at one of the most isolated airfields on the planet.

A note on seasons (live weather pilots, read this)

If you fly live weather, the calendar is on your side in one half of the country and against you in the other. May marks the start of the dry season across northern Australia - which means the Kimberley, the Top End and the reef routes (9, 10, and much of 2 and 12) get months of clear, stable, flyable weather from now: this is exactly when to go. The south is heading the other way, into austral winter - so expect real fronts across the Great Ocean Road and genuinely rough conditions over Tasmania's west coast. Don't avoid route 8 for that; that is route 8. Just brief it like you mean it.

Fly it like a tour, not a checklist

A structural suggestion: fly these as a tour and let it accumulate. Twelve routes is thirty-odd hours of flying, two dozen airports, and - if you record your flights - a logbook chapter that ends with an Australia-shaped cluster on your personal world map. My FS Flights logs every leg automatically, tracks the airports, regions and countries you collect, and scores every one of those arrivals - and some of these are arrivals worth scoring. Hamilton Island's sloped 14, Lord Howe under Mount Gower's rotor, a red-dirt strip at White Cliffs: touchdown zone discipline and honest approach speeds stop being blog theory out here.

And take the Boomerang. Local Legend 24, the CAC Boomerang - the only combat aircraft wholly designed and built in Australia - released alongside the update, and a warbird lap of Bathurst or the Top End over the country that built it is exactly the kind of flying World Updates exist for.

An entire continent just got rebuilt. Go and use it.