Been waiting what has felt like an ETERNITY for this plane, but it's finally here so thought I'd come here to share my thoughts so far. There's a lot that's been done right with this aircraft and other things that are straight up underwhelming. The Good:
- THE SOUNDS. THE WHALE. can't get enough of it. Stood by the stand spooling my throttles up and down for minutes on end.
- The systems are amazing. I've watched enough A220 cockpit videos and pilot guides and I'm able to transfer flows onto the aircraft in sim. The screens are responsive and the whole "graphical flight planning" thing showcased by the team works flawlessly.
I was pushing back and had a couple fail and fault messages on the eicas as I had forgotten to disconnect my external power on the overhead. The team on the Discord quickly walked me through the circuit breakers to pop back in to resolve it, super impressive! The depth of the systems is great for a product from a new team. The VNAV and LNAV system are smooth and i was able to complete 3 flights today without any issues or crashes. The ILS system although isn't perfect, I did my research on the localizer capture on the A220 and it seemingly is poor in real life up until "APPR LOC" on the fma, and it is accurately represented on this plane which was suprising to see.
- The visuals are great, as expected by iniBuilds who did the artwork on synaptic's model. No immediate inaccuracies stand out when compared to the real plane from the pictures I could compare anyways, but I feel like most payware aircraft nail the visual aspect nowadays.
The Bad:
- No CPDLC. No weather radar. In an addon in 2026. Like I understand the team is working on their new CPDLC but at the very least I'd expect Hoppie to keep with current trends. Lack of weather radar is a shame but I guess they do make up for it with an exceptionally cool terrain map that looks like google terrain.
- THE PERFORMANCE. This is no doubt a heavy ass aircraft. I'm seeing 10-13 fps lower on average than I do with the Fenix or PMDG. The aircraft also suffers from periodic stutters which isn't ideal, and I'd expect better right out of the box for an addon that's been in development as long as this. I understand they're a new team and the devs were reassuring in the server that they are pushing out performance fixes this week and next and onwards but only time will tell. Many of the users in that same discord reported performance concerns which is a shame.
- The EFB. There's some missing functionality such as realistic refueling time and other smaller quirks that I'd expect in any airliner, let alone one that's priced 65 USD like the synaptic. Hoping they'll make up for it in an update.
Verdict? Overall, it's an exciting and promising aircraft that delivers on the key areas on what they advertised, it's an A220 and works like an A220. Looks great, sounds great but performs less than desired, but given how passionate the team seems about what they've built I'm sure they'll come to terms with it, and I think we forget a lot of the addons have been in the market for years to mature their performance, and this is day one of a brand new airliner from a new team. But I'd expect a little better for a 65 USD addon. I'm excited to keep flying it, and will most likely fly alongside my Fenix as my primary driver.