CLS A340-300

The Airbus A340 is a four-engined, long haul wide-body commercial passenger jet aircraft. Airbus launched the A340 in June 1987 in parallel with the A330, as a single aircraft program. Both aircraft share the same wing and similar fuselage structure, and borrow heavily from the advanced avionics and composite structure technology developed for the A320. The A340-300 first flew in 1991 and entered service with Lufthansa and Air France in March 1993. The A340 is a competitor of the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and the Boeing 777. It seats between 261 and 380 passengers, and has a range between 6,700 and 9,000 NM. The CFM International CFM56-5C4 engines are the only engine choice for the -200 and -300 variants.

The -500 and -600 variants are powered by the Rolls-Royce Trent 500 engines. The A340-500 is the longest-range variant and can fly 313 passengers in a three-class cabin layout over 8,650 nm (16,020 km). The A340-600 is with a length of 75,30 meter almost 5 meter longer than the Boeing 747-400 and with that the longest passenger aircraft in the world. It was designed as an early generation 747 replacement. The A340-600 flies 380 passengers in a three-class cabin layout (419 in 2 class) over 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 km).

Started in 2005, Commercial Level Simulations (CLS) has grown to a high quality commercial add-on developer for MS Flight Simulator. Their products are not that expensive and yet high quality.

Their airbus A340-300 is a beautifully designed aircraft and it represents the real A340-300 very well. The A340-300 is part of the A330 & A340 package. It contains the A330-200, A330-300, A340-200 and A340-300 in all engine variants, sound sets for all engine variants, 167 pages PDF manual, livery manager and over 150 free high quality liveries (for all aircraft, can be downloaded separately).

Many cockpit systems are simulated like Realistic EICAM and EFIS displays, GPWS, TCAS, etc. The functionality of the FMS is limited and can automatically read the IFR flightplan that you've created in FS. The flight dynamics are well balanced and the animations are very accurate. The autopilot is working perfectly, but the autoland function is too basic and does not support 'flare' and 'automatic autothrottle disengage' like you find on the PSS A340. So in short, there is no autoland function. With small icons on the 2d panel, you can switch between the virtual cockpit and wingview. There are a few extra features like a 3D pushback truck, air stairs, dynamic wingflex (the wings are moving up and down in turbulent weather), engine exhaust heat effects and more.

The main landing gear is very detailed, but unfortunately, the animation is a bit strange. It looks like CLS tried hard to make the gear animation as realistic as possible, but despite their efforts, the behavior is still unrealistic. The rear wheels of the bogie make first contact with the runway and shortly after that, the forward set of wheels come down. This is exactly right. But after the forward set of wheels come down, the landing gear is floating until the nose wheel makes contact with the runway. Same thing happens with takeoff. CLS however, is not to blame for this, there aren't any A330/A340 type aircraft for FS with truly realistic landing gear behavior. This is most likely due to limitations in FS. The supercritical wings of especially the A330 generate a huge amount of lift, resulting in a slow travel of the main bogies upon touchdown. This behavior is almost impossible to recreate in FS.

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