I bought this for my son – who is rightly or wrongly following his dad’s footsteps into commercial aviation – as a Christmas present. It’s early days yet, but as his school has an A320 sim, and it’s training aircraft are all glass cockpit DA40/42’s, I thought this might be the most appropriate controller for his PC.

The Captain pack comes with the joystick itself, the thrust levers, and the flap/speedbrake attachments.

The joystick is very similar to the real thing, with a few extra buttons here and there, which you could assign within your sim of choice to various functions. One of the things I really like, is the ability to switch over the control from left-handed operation to right, and vice versa. With the autopilot disconnect switch and A.N.other (that doesn’t exist in real life) being swappable.

This is a major plus point, as not only does it allow you to fly an Airbus style aircraft from either seat, with the controls correctly laid out, but, in the case of my lad, he’ll do his initial training in the DA40 from the left seat, so being able to ‘fly’ with his left hand and operate the throttle and other controls with his right – later switching seats as he progresses to the end of the course. And this pack allows him to switch over ‘seamlessly’.

The joystick itself, and the whole pack, is made from plastic, but generally feels substantial enough to put up with the rigours of simming. If you don’t have rudder pedals, the joystick has a twist function to allow some form of rudder control. This can be locked out with a switch underneath the base of the unit.

The thrust levers are set up for Airbus flight straight out of the box, with ‘detents’ for CLB/MCT/TOGA almost like the real thing. The ‘detents’ can be removed, again, by accessing the underside of the unit. Reverse lock switches are in place, though the ‘lift’ to go through the gate actually into reverse isn’t there. Likewise the engine switches are straight forward switches, whereas in real life, they have a ‘lift’ over the gate to activate. A shame this wasn’t incorporated, but not a deal breaker.

Just below the engine switches are the two fire indicators – only they’re not – they’ve been replaced by push button switches – which I think is a good compromise, it ‘looks’ the part, while adding some extra functionality, as again, these can be programmed/allocated to your liking.

And in-between the ‘fire indicators’ is the engine crank/start-ign rotary selector – all present and correct, though again, there is no ‘lift’ required to activate it (you’ll see a common theme here)!

Either side of the throttle quadrant, are the speedbrake, gear, and autobrake controls to the left, and flap, rudder trim, and park brake to the right.

Starting with the flap selector, it looks like a scaled down version of the real thing (the whole of the thrust lever assembly is scaled down to around 1/2 real size (ish – it’s been a few years since I flew Airbus). But, as with all other controls some of the real life features are missing – in this case, the lever that you have to pull up to release and move the selector from detent to detent is physically in place, but it doesn’t move, or serve any purpose other than ‘looking the part’. The detents themselves are all there for Flap positions 1, 2 & 3, so again, a decent compromise.

Below the flap lever is the rudder trim, along with the rudder trim reset button, and below that still is the park brake – again a simple switch, which should have a lift gate to prevent accidental movement – but doesn’t. Both of these controls are on the real aircraft, though they’re not positioned where they are here – but we can easily forgive that, as at least they have been included – though it is a shame that they used a generic rotary switch for the rudder trim (the same as the engine start selector) instead of something that looks like the real thing. At least the park brake is an accurate, but smaller, copy of the real thing.

The speedbrake then is basically a repeat of the flap lever; I can see why they’ve done this, as it makes things a lot cheaper to mass-produce, but does mean it’s not quite accurate. It looks right, but has no ‘push’ to release function, nor does it have a ‘pull’ to arm function. Again, it’s an acceptable compromise to keep costs down I suppose. Where it does differ from the real thing, which could have been easily avoided, were the number of detents, which the real thing doesn’t have – in real life, there is a ‘soft’ stop at the halfway mark to stop you inadvertently demanding more than half speedbrake (there are limitation on it’s use – though generally the aircraft won’t deploy more than you’re allowed, it will ‘complain’ with a warning that you’re trying to deploy too much). The detents can be removed entirely with adjustment from underneath, but there’s no facility to just have a single detent at the halfway point.

Just below the speedbrake is the gear lever. A much smaller copy of the real thing, and again, for sake of something to include, it’s not in the correct place, but happy to have it. You know what I’m going to say by now – again there’s no ‘lift’ protection, which is there in real life.

And finally, the Autobrake selector. On the single-aisle Airbus, this is a combination of three lit push buttons, to select, Low, Med, or Max. I have to assume that this is a copy of the autobrake switch on the 350/380 series aircraft (maybe the 330, but I don’t know). It has a few more selections available, including BTV, which is Brake To Vacate – something not available on single aisle Airbus – we don’t even have it on the 787. Again, the switch isn’t protected by a lift, or push, function as it would be in real life – just a plain rotary switch.

Connecting up to a PC requires just a single USB connection, as the units all link together before running a single cable to the computer. Run the Thrustmaster setup, and then it’s automictically recognised and configured for you, with most major controls being correctly assigned (this was using MS Flight Sim 2020).

All in all, for a couple of hundred quid, if you’re serious about your simming, it’s probably one of the best value packs out there. While it’s definitely Airbus centric, it can certainly be used for other types too, and there are plenty of spare buttons on the joystick base to assign other major functions.

It loses a star simply because of the compromises that TM have chosen to make in the name of cost savings and convenience – namely the lack of any ‘lift’ protection function on any switch or lever which would have them in real life. I can accept it overall though – too many people out there wouldn’t know about said protections and TM would most likely have a a lot of returns from people then forcing, and breaking, switches – and likely blaming the product!

So am I being mean in dropping the star? Probably! If you think so, feel free to take my 4 star review as a 5 star review – just accept that it’s almost like the real thing – but not quite! 😉