Your first 20 hours of flight simulation

Most new sim pilots crash the Cessna twice, get intimidated by the cockpit, and wonder what they're missing. Here's what actually happens — hour by hour — from first takeoff to your first real cross-country flight.

By The JustBeginning Editors · Published May 30, 2026

Flight simulation has a reputation for being intimidating. The cockpits look like alien dashboards, the manuals run to hundreds of pages, and YouTube tutorials assume you already know half of what you’re trying to learn. Most beginners bounce off within a week.

That’s almost always because they started in the wrong place — too much study, too little flying. The actual path through the first 20 hours is simpler than it looks.

Hours 1–3: Just get it in the air

Your first session has exactly one goal: take off, fly around for 30 minutes, and land. That’s it.

In MSFS 2024, open the World Map, pick a small regional airport with a short runway (KOAK, KSBA, or any Class D airport near a coast or valley), select the Cessna 172 Skyhawk, and set weather to clear skies. Disable the AI copilot assistance if you want full control, or leave it on — both are fine on day one.

Don’t read the manual first. You’ll absorb procedures much faster once you have physical feedback from the controls. Taxi to the runway, push the throttle forward, rotate around 65 knots, climb to 3,000 feet, and turn left. That’s enough of an intro.

The Cessna 172 is deliberately forgiving. It doesn’t want to stall or spin. If something goes wrong and you freeze, pulling power back and pushing forward slightly will put you in a stable glide. Let the sim surprise you.

person holding black and red hand tool — Photo by ThisisEngineering on Unsplash

What you actually need to know in hours 1–3:

Throttle controls climb and descent — power up climbs, power back descends. The yoke or joystick controls pitch attitude, not speed.
Rudder keeps you coordinated — when you bank, apply a little rudder in the same direction. Your feet know what to do instinctively after a few sessions.
The altimeter, airspeed indicator, and attitude indicator are the three instruments you actually need for visual flying. Everything else can wait.

By hour three, you’ll have crashed at least once on landing. That’s fine. The pattern every beginner lands long on (comes in too fast, balloons over the runway, runs off the end) is a rite of passage. Lower flaps sooner, cut power earlier.

Hours 4–10: Learning to actually navigate

The jump from “flying around” to “going somewhere” is where flight sim stops feeling like a novelty and starts feeling like a skill.

This is the phase for learning basic VFR (Visual Flight Rules) navigation: how to read a sectional chart, how to plan a route from one airport to another, and how to communicate with ATC — or at least follow the instructions MSFS’s AI ATC gives you.

Pick two airports about 60 nautical miles apart. Plot the route on SkyVector before you fly it — it shows terrain, airspace, and navigation aids. Then fly it in MSFS with the map visible on a second screen or tablet.

white and red kanji text — Photo by Andrés Dallimonti on Unsplash

Milestones that land in this phase:

Flying without looking at the altimeter every 10 seconds. This happens around hour 5-6. The aircraft starts to feel stable and you stop white-knuckling the joystick.
Making radio calls to MSFS ATC. The menu-driven system is clunky, but the habit of reporting your position and intentions becomes automatic.
Your first real crosswind landing. Crosswind landings are where the gap between twist-axis rudder and real pedals becomes obvious. If you bought pedals, this is when you’ll be glad.

Don’t try to fly with real charts and full procedures yet. The goal in this phase is hours in the seat, not procedural perfection.

Hours 11–16: Weather, instruments, and things going wrong

Once you can navigate in clear weather, start adding adversity.

MSFS 2024’s weather system is genuinely impressive. Dial in overcast skies, reduce visibility, add wind. Suddenly your reliable cross-country becomes a navigation challenge — and you understand why pilots learn instrument flying.

This is also where MSFS’s Flight Academy pays off. If you haven’t worked through the instrument flying modules, hours 11-16 are when to do it. You don’t need to master IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) to benefit — understanding the ILS (instrument landing system) approach alone will transform your landing accuracy in marginal weather.

black flat screen computer monitor — Photo by Mike Petrucci on Unsplash

Things that happen in this phase:

You’ll get lost once. The fix is simple (tune a nearby VOR, identify your position) but the experience of being disoriented over featureless terrain is clarifying. Respect your instruments.
You’ll try autopilot and realize it’s complicated. The autopilot in even a basic Cessna has modes — heading, altitude, nav. Spend 20 minutes with it on the ground before using it in flight.
You might start researching hardware upgrades. Head tracking becomes very appealing when you’re flying IFR approaches and want to glance at your instruments naturally. If you haven’t bought rudder pedals yet, this is when the arguments for them become unavoidable.

Hours 17–20: Your first real flight

At hour 17 or so, try to replicate a real-world flight. Pick a route you’ve actually flown as a passenger — Seattle to Portland, JFK to BOS, or wherever — and fly it in MSFS.

Use real-world charts from SkyVector. File a flight plan with MSFS’s ATC using real procedures (even if you don’t execute them perfectly). Look out the window at familiar terrain.

This is when the sim stops being abstract. You’re not flying “a Cessna” — you’re flying over specific mountains at a specific altitude with specific weather, and the decisions feel real. The $60 joystick is doing something that feels significant.

At hour 20, you’ve logged more pattern work than many real student pilots need for their first solo. You understand why certain procedures exist. You’ve had at least one moment where something went wrong and you figured it out without panicking.

What to do at hour 21

A few things change the slope from here:

VATSIM becomes accessible. You know enough radio procedure to contact ground at a small airport, get taxi instructions, and depart without embarrassing yourself. Start at a small, uncontrolled field and work up.
Study a real aircraft manual. Pick one plane — the Cessna 172 Skyhawk Information Manual is free to read online — and learn how the systems actually work. The sim models them, and knowing what’s really happening makes everything click.
Consider an aircraft add-on. MSFS’s default Cessna 172 is good. The payware Carenado or Blackbird versions model systems the default omits. After 20 hours, you’ll appreciate the difference.

You’re not a beginner anymore. You’re a sim pilot who knows the difference between flying and studying flying — and has chosen the former.

Need the right hardware to get airborne? See our flight sim gear guide for the exact controllers, pedals, and software worth buying first.