Madeira Airport (LPMA), now officially known as Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport, is one of those world-famous locations to aviation geeks, due to its perilous and defiant location by the sea. It’s a challenging airport that is now getting an improved virtual recreation in Microsoft Flight Simulator, courtesy of AmSim.
Madeira Airport has actually been custom-built by Asobo in the simulator, so it’s already better by default than any other generic airport. However, improvements can definitely be made to make it more realistic, and that’s exactly what AmSim is looking to bring to the table with their latest release.
Madeira’s airport was once infamous for its very short runway, which together with the requirement for a 150° right-hand-turn and short-final made for many nerve-racking landings over many years. Fortunately, the runway saw a few extensions over the years, most notably in 2000, when an impressive engineering project was completed, extending the runway by more than 1km, partly over the sea, thus making it much safer to land, despite the still frequent strong wings that continue to make this approach a very exciting one for pilots and keen airplane spotters.
Virtual pilots seeking to experience some of these thrills in MSFS now have a new bespoke scenery for the airport, which brings it up to a more realistic and immersive standard. In their own rendition of LPMA, AmSim has added high-resolution ground textures and markings, as well as detailed terminal buildings with all its surrounding structures also fully modeled.
AmSim’s LPMA Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport is now available through Orbx Direct, priced at around €10.00 (~$15.00), and it’s well worth a look if you’re looking to make your landings at Madeira a bit more immersive. Note that AmSim recommends deleting the existing Asobo Madeira Airport from the MSFS Content Manager, in order to avoid any conflicts.
With this release, AmSim expands its airport portfolio for MSFS, which already includes Palermo Airport, in Italy, among other previous releases near the developer’s home country, Armenia.
Main features:
- High-resolution ground textures
- Custom ground markings
- High-resolution custom ground textures, dirt and other details
- Detailed Main terminal
- Surrounding buildings fully modelled
