When we first wrote about Tailstrike back in March, founder Matt Kline opened his FSWeekend presentation with a simple question: what happens to your aircraft after you land and close the simulator? Back then, Tailstrike’s answer was that the aircraft stays where you parked it, waiting for the next pilot. Today the answer goes a lot further, at least if you fly the MD-11.
Tailstrike and TFDi Design have announced a partnership that, according to both companies, brings the first fully persistent, shared aircraft to flight simulation. When you load into a TFDi MD-11 on the Tailstrike network, you can now inherit the exact state the previous pilot left it in: switch positions, system states and, for Extended Simulation owners, accumulated wear and failures. Whatever you do on your flight is then passed on to whoever flies that airframe next.
The integration is live now for Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 on PC, and it costs nothing to use.
From parking spots to panel states
When Tailstrike came out of beta in August, each registration on the network already had a location, a public flight history and some basic state values. The MD-11 is the first aircraft to go all the way. Tailstrike says hundreds of systems and thousands of states now carry forward on the network.
Persistent wear isn’t a new idea in itself. A2A’s Accu-Sim aircraft have long tracked the condition of your own airframe between flights, and TFDi’s Extended Simulation package does something similar for the MD-11. What’s new is sharing that history between pilots. The way Tailstrike describes it, the aircraft you step into is shaped by everyone who flew it before you. Checklists become essential, and an emergency can come from how real people have actually flown and maintained that specific airframe instead of from a failure menu.
Kline says the TFDi aircraft was an easy choice for the first partnership:
“We’re proud to partner with TFDi Design, a premier developer in flight simulation. The TFDi Design MD-11, with its meticulously modeled systems and simulated failures, is the ideal aircraft to bring the Tailstrike vision to life.”
You decide how much history you inherit
Before you worry about inheriting a wrecked airframe, the high-fidelity sync is optional. Kline told us that the Tailstrike plugin offers three choices. Pilots can:
- sync 1:1 with the last MD-11 state
- sync only basic values, such as radios, squawk, altimeter and fuel
- sync nothing at all
The basic sync works on every aircraft on the network, not just the MD-11. The only requirement for any Tailstrike flight is starting at the correct airport.
Where Extended Simulation comes in
The MD-11 has had quite a journey. TFDi previewed its Extended Simulation failures and maintenance package in late 2025, before launching the MSFS 2024 “definitive edition” in January with more than 160 failures. On its own, Extended Simulation keeps wear and failures on your local aircraft. With the Tailstrike plugin, Kline explains, that same aircraft now inherits and contributes to the wear, failures and maintenance of a shared airframe.
Pilots without Extended Simulation still get a lot from the integration. They can load into an MD-11 with the previous pilot’s exact panel configuration, which covers over 1,000 states, just without the failure system.
And if you do inherit a mess, you’re not stuck with it. Any pilot can reset the aircraft to a vanilla state through the EFB after syncing with Tailstrike.
TFDi’s managing director, Collin Biedenkapp, says the partnership fits the studio’s plans for the aircraft:
“The MD-11 is a complex, dynamic machine. Tailstrike gives it life and lets each airframe build a real history across all of the pilots that flew it. For our Extended Simulation users, this is taken even further by allowing individual parts to accrue real wear and tear between pilots and capture the spirit of the engineering behind them.”
21 airframes, and room for more
Kline says 21 MD-11 airframes are available on the network right now. That number can grow. Tailstrike Supporters can “endow” new aircraft, permanently adding real-world registrations to the network as new airframes that anyone can fly. The Supporter who endows an airframe also gets their name on its aircraft profile for good.
The Supporter tier launched in August at a founder rate of $5 a month or $50 a year, but you don’t need it for the MD-11. Kline confirmed that the integration is available to everyone on the free tier. And if you own the MD-11, you can redeem your product key in the Tailstrike app for a free month of Supporter.
Getting started
To try it, create a free account at tailstrike.net, install the Tailstrike plugin, and sync your TFDi MD-11 in one click. Tailstrike also says it works with all major simulators and networks.
