u/Aggravating-Big-795

Hey guys, I was one of the first people to share my impressions on Reddit when I wrote about the Synaptic A220 when it first came out. Now that I've had around 2 weeks since release to play around with the aircraft more, I've found some more interesting points to share and my impressions have grown on the aircraft.

Firstly, performance. It was quite bad upon release, and Synaptic have updated the plane to 1.0.4 now (1.0.5 the coming tuesday). I think their approach is respectable and the team seems very committed to fixing performance, and I'm seeing vastly better results on my 4070ti machine. I can finally fly most routes with heavy scenery, and it's been a joy. It's not perfect yet however, but at the same time many developers have taken close to a year to reach a smooth level of performance (Fenix, and others), and I'm sure they'll keep cracking on and the A220 will get there.

Without the issue of performance shadowing the aircraft, I've been able to take the time to play around with the aircraft systems to really try and explore the depth presented for this $65 USD addon. The systems are frankly, amazing. I didn't think we'd ever see a high fidelity A220 in flight sim but here we are.

I've attached a few screenshots to this post, and you can see circuit breakers actually affecting the aircraft systems. For example, I was able to fail the aircraft's data systems and pop other circuit breakers through the screens. This resulted in the appropriate non-normal checklists flashing with a ton of advisory messages, with loss of HYD sensors, GNSS and etc. I am obviously not type rated on the plane to verify these behaviors but its great to see this level of depth.

I killed the aircraft's FADEC's ignition CBs, and the aircraft had faults pop up and the ignitors were armed white instead of green, with an eventual overheat message popping up.

For the ILS and autoflight, I watched many videos trying to verify the ILS poor-tracking behavior while on APPR LOC1 as the Synaptic team keeps suggesting, but I can report that the aircraft does deviate to a good degree from the ILS during this phase, but not to the extent the Synaptic plane does, which is probably something they have to fix.

The sounds haven't been updated since release, and sounds apart from the engine and certain cockpit sounds are still very subpar. I find the ground roll, touchdown sounds and other environmental sounds to be less than desired and they sound flat. Echo19 definitely has room for improvement in these areas.

The FMS is amazing (I had a couple FMS1 fail/crashes during flights but I was able to press the format again and it came right back up). The graphical flight planning system works admirably and makes heavy vatsim flying a breeze.

I'm very confident this will be my daily driver ONCE performance is perfect, and I'm able to fly most of my routes with this plane. The synaptic guys have been very helpful in assisting a lot of my preliminary issues in their discord, and I'm happy I supported this product.

As a bonus, I also noticed the hydraulic simulation was talked about being well represented, I flipped both Fenix and Synaptic planes upside down and I noticed the Synaptic's elevators droop towards gravity whereas the Fenix drooped upwards. This is something so minor that nobody would've ever noticed but it's fun!

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.