What happens to your aircraft after you land and close the simulator? That question, posed by Tailstrike founder Matt Kline during his FSWeekend presentation, sounds philosophical but it has a practical answer: nothing. The flight ends, the aircraft disappears, and nothing carries forward. Tailstrike is built around the idea that it shouldn’t work that way.
Tailstrike is a free community platform that gives every simulated aircraft a persistent location and a public flight history, shared across all pilots on the network. When you land, the aircraft stays where you left it, visible to everyone, waiting for the next person to take it somewhere new.
How it works
The workflow is simple. You sign into Tailstrike, browse nearly 1,000 available real-world aircraft registrations, and lease whichever one you want to fly. Leasing gives you exclusive access for up to two hours to depart the aircraft’s current airport. You load into your simulator at that location, connect via the Tailstrike plugin or VATSIM, and fly anywhere you like. When you land, the flight is permanently logged on the aircraft’s public profile and the position updates for everyone on the network.
Every aircraft maintains a full public history showing every pilot who has flown it, every route taken, the total distance covered, and any notes pilots have left. Matt demonstrated this during the FSWeekend presentation with a virtual FedEx 777F parked at Oakland, which had already been flown by five different pilots across 17,000 miles since joining the network.
The rules are deliberately minimal: depart within two hours of leasing, stay connected throughout the flight, fly at 1x speed, and land at an airport compatible with your aircraft size. Beyond that, there are no restrictions on routes, callsigns, or how you fly.
Work with all sims and it’s free!
The Tailstrike plugin supports MSFS 2024 and 2020. VATSIM pilots can fly without downloading anything at all, with flights tracked automatically through public VATSIM data. Helicopters are planned for a future update.
Tailstrike is free with no subscription required. You can sign up and start flying now at tailstrike.net, or join the Discord for updates on upcoming features.
