747-8 Feels like a brick

[Holylin]

Does the 747-8 really fly like a brick compared to the (smaller) airbus?
It is extremly slow to climb to higher altitudes. The autopilot sometimes does not even want to climb at all because of reasons, while ATC constantly yells at me to expedite my climb ...
Even on max engines and climbing manually it feels like the aircraft is underpowered and while cruising on higher altitudes using the auto pilot the aircraft maintains a 10-15 degree upwards angle and has a somewhat low speed ?!? ...
Does this boing really behave like a brick or is this a sim problem?
I mean the airbus A320 really feels like an arcade fighter jet compared to the 747-8 ...

[Plutonian]

Same here, my Boeing 747 AOA in cruise level is upwards and idk why. I try to manually put the nose down a little but then i loose control of the airplane. Can someone help?

[Secretagentshyguy001]

It's bugged. In xplane the 747 autopilot behaves like expected.

[Neo King Arthur]

I think it's both a bug and working as expected. I mean, it's the 747. It's the queen of the skies with 4 engines to carry all that huge weight. So of course, physics dictate the bigger your mass, the harder it is to manoeuvre.

For cruising at high altitudes. You have to go back to the physics as well. The higher you are, the thinner the air. So if the air is thinner, your wings generate less lift than you are when you're flying at lower altitude.

If you set your autopilot to maintain a high altitude like FL450. The air is so thin, that the wings doesn't generate enough lift to maintain that altitude since it cannot compensate for the gravitational pull of the earth exerted on your aircraft. So the autopilot compensates this by pitching the nose up. so that the wings are angled to hit more of the already thin air to generate more lift at least enough to counteract the gravitational pull.

A320 is a short-range airline. It's smaller and lighter, so it's more nimble. The 747 is a beast. And they are sluggish by nature in real life. If you look at the A380 it's even more of a beast and it's even a lot more sluggish than the 747. It's just physics.

[Plutonian]

Originally posted by Neo:

I think it's both a bug and working as expected. I mean, it's the 747. It's the queen of the skies with 4 engines to carry all that huge weight. So of course, physics dictate the bigger your mass, the harder it is to manoeuvre.

For cruising at high altitudes. You have to go back to the physics as well. The higher you are, the thinner the air. So if the air is thinner, your wings generate less lift than you are when you're flying at lower altitude.

If you set your autopilot to maintain a high altitude like FL450. The air is so thin, that the wings doesn't generate enough lift to maintain that altitude since it cannot compensate for the gravitational pull of the earth exerted on your aircraft. So the autopilot compensates this by pitching the nose up. so that the wings are angled to hit more of the already thin air to generate more lift at least enough to counteract the gravitational pull.

A320 is a short-range airline. It's smaller and lighter, so it's more nimble. The 747 is a beast. And they are sluggish by nature in real life. If you look at the A380 it's even more of a beast and it's even a lot more sluggish than the 747. It's just physics.

How does the B747 pilot manage in real life then to maintain an horizontal AOA at cruise altitude?

[Neo King Arthur]

I believe the bug here is that the nose pitch during altitude is a bit too steep. But in real life, a 747, or any other aircraft don't cruise at 0 degrees level. It's more like between 0-5 degrees pitch to keep their cruising altitude before losing too much lift.

But the 747 seems to pitch at up to 10 degrees on crusing.. And it looks like that's the bug. Then there's the waving up and down on the V/S.. which is also a bug. The 747 is just unflyable right now. I can't even do a proper ILS landing.

[Holylin]

Yeah I was doing a flight from somewhere in Mexico to Florida with the Boing. ATC sent me higher and higher as usual, and the Boing was slow to climb at first and then at about FL320 or 350 the auto pilot just would not climb to FL420 and sometimes it would even descend.
I started with 50% fuel that barely brought me to my destination so I could not have been that overweight.

ILS Landing on the A320 feels like a dream, if you are on course you do your short flight sim check list press a few buttons and usually you do a point on landing.
The Boing was constantly too high and too fast so I deployed speed brakes from time to time, but the auto pilot had nothing better to do than to apply full throttle ... and no I was not close to staling or something.
I also noticed the Boing bouncing like crazy on landing and trying to get up on its own before even reaching v1 when starting.