Also I looked this up and gliders are a big hobby in Southern France: strong clubs and great geography.
Absolutely!
Take Santa Monica instead of LAX
Take Teterboro instead of JFK or LaGuardia
Take London Oxford instead of Heathrow
Take Seattle Boeing Field (BFI) instead of Sea/Tac
As an added bonus, there are so many other big airports nearby that you frequently get to enjoy a free Blue Sky Zone just for showing up!
I just nabbed 74-0787 (USAF E-4B Nightwatch, AKA the “Doomsday Plane”) passing through Ohio. i thought the rarity would be higher than 7.63, since there are only three in existence. But it looks like Sky Cards just treats it as any other 747-200.
It looks like a Globemaster might be on the way to Antarctica from Christchurch, NZ. It currently doesn’t have the destination but apparently the trick to get these airports is to click on the plane, let it land and just wait and wait and wait. The plane will not disappear (unless you click off) but eventually the destination will update.
So if you have the patience, and you really want to get a super difficult to tag airport then check this flight out. It’s a yellow icon heading south from New Zealand right now.
Thanks, looks to have circled around back north.
Probably for the best i need to go to bed!
I’ve done something similar. I needed a NY-to-LA for yesterday’s mission, so I travelled to Ontario, CA. Caught the flight I needed, and then it was pretty easy to complete the 6 missions for that airport.
For sentimental reasons, I went to Tacoma Narrows Airport rather than Boeing Field. Everett might be the best choice; it’s north of Seattle and you get all the Seattle-to-Vancouver flights.
I thought of another possible hack. It’s very cheap to travel to an airport near the one you’re already at. I have Ontario for the rest of the week. At 7:59 on Sunday evening, I could travel to Long Beach for about 11 coins, probably. Then I have 30 minutes to complete the missions for that airport and I’d have free travel for the rest of the week. By swapping back and forth, I could have perpetual access to the L.A. area for almost nothing.
Those Kiwis are such teases. A flight to Antarctica would get me two trophies.
I caught a flight to the Falkland Islands, which completed the Llama trophy. I wasn’t looking for it at the time, just stumbled across it.
This can also extend a stay at an airport if you can’t quite complete the weekly mission in 30 minutes. You can jump to a nearby regional and still watch for the tasks that you need, then jump back.
Tail # 09-9209 if anyone wants to stalk it and hopefully catch it on an Antarctica milk run.
Probably these guys.
Wow, that’s it exactly. Nice find!
Don’t give me too much credit; it just popped up in one of my news feeds.
Works for me, I would have missed that flight. Damn time zones LOL.
Speaking of time zones: I had a couple of fantastic sessions in Brisbane yesterday evening from ~7:00 to 8:00pm US Eastern time. I had already unlocked the major Australia airports but I must have unlocked two dozen more.
Granted, those new ones weren’t some of the crucial interior ones I need for the trophy, but they help. I also unlocked a couple new aircraft; one was a chopper that services oil platforms, apparently.
I unlocked KYA in Turkey with only 2 tasks. I didn’t realize there were airports with less than 6 tasks.
I downloaded this yesterday and it’s proving an amusing diversion throughout the day. I’ve mostly been just trying to grab any new plane that comes along in my home area. My rarest find so far is a LAK-17 FES at 9.82.
About moving airports, what’s the best strategy there? And when people say they have a week free at a certain airport, how did they get that? Do I understand correctly that everyone’s “week” resets on Sunday night and not based on when they started at that location?
Airports show up as little icons on the map, to me they look like a spool of thread. When you start the game, they’re all gray. When you catch a flight, whatever airport it’s heading to is unlocked, and the icon turns white. You’ve probably already discovered that.
Planes don’t always have a destination recorded while they’re in flight, which is a little annoying. If you wait until it actually lands somewhere, it will record that airport as the destination, and you have a few seconds to catch it before the plane disappears.
Once you’ve unlocked an airport, you can click on it and get the option to travel there. You have to spend coins or use a free ticket. Now your radar is centered at that airport and you can catch planes in the area. It lasts for 30 minutes.
Some airports, mostly the larger/busier ones, have a list of tasks (usually 6) that you can complete while you’re there. They are things like making 5 perfect catches, catching 2 planes taking off from some nearby airport, or catching a plane of a particular type. Finish all the tasks and you have free access to that airport for the rest of the week. Sometimes you can complete all the tasks within that 30 minutes; if you don’t, you can pay to visit again and complete the tasks you missed the first time. A green check mark appears on the airport icon.
It’s sometimes easier to go to a smaller airport near a large one. If you go to LAX, the tasks might require you to catch planes going to or from Long Beach, which wouldn’t be too hard. If you go to Long Beach, you might have to catch planes going to or from LAX, and there’s an endless supply of those.
You’re right that everything resets on Sunday night. I think it’s midnight in Greenwich, England; 8:00 for me on the U.S. east coast. There’s not much point in completing the tasks at an airport on a Sunday afternoon, since you’ll only get free access for a few more hours. On the other hand, if you do it on a Monday morning you have free trips there for almost 7 full days.
If you want to complete the tasks at an airport, it’s best to go there during its busy time of day. There’s a website someone linked to upthread that can show you the tasks for an airport before you actually go.
My strategy, such as it is, is to look at the daily tasks. It might be something like “catch a flight from Buenos Aires to Madrid, or back”. I’ll check the airspace around Madrid, but not travel there immediately. When I see a plane taking off for Buenos Aires, I spend the coins to travel to Madrid, catch the Buenos Aires flight, then try to finish the tasks for Madrid so I can go back for the rest of the week. You could also find an airport that’s on the flight path between those two airports, and catch the plane while it flies nearby.
You can also go to airports that will help you complete particular trophies. If you want to catch Delta planes for the Widget trophy, go to the airport in Atlanta. I’m trying to catch flights to various countries in Africa, and I currently have Paris unlocked. There are websites where you can search for flights between cities, and see when the flight departs.
The cost to visit an airport is cheaper if you’re already close by. I live in Boston. If I want to ‘travel’ to Africa, I can save some coins by going to Paris first (since I have that for free) and then to an airport in Africa.
Super helpful @Robot_Arm, thank you so much for that! I guess I’ll just work on trying to catch as many planes to new airports as I can, and then pick my first travel location on Monday.
I got the Kangaroo trophy yesterday and Maple Leaf today, and only need one obscure territory near St. John’s for the Eagle trophy: Saint Pierre and Miquelon. It’s going to be tricky getting a flight inbound to it.
Yeah, that was the last for me, too. If you don’t consider it cheating, you can use Google to find out where flights to Saint Pierre and Miquelon depart from, then use Flightaware to find out when flights between those two places will take place. It will even (hopefully) show you if it’s been delayed, when it leaves the gate, etc.
That’s what I did today. Picked up 7 new African countries, and might pick up a couple more this evening. I need 7 more for the Africa trophy (St. Helena is gonna be the tricky one), and only 31 left in the world.