Also a Continental throwback! This one is special to me, it is the first flight I ever remember taking as a kid and what started my lifelong interest in flight. I've been waiting years for a chance to sim this one - was waiting on a good -200ER, ATC mods, sceneries for both airports, but most importantly a full day of no plans where I get a chance to simulate this beast of a flight without sleeping through half of it. Silver lining of being sick lol

This flight is special to me personally, but there's some aspects about it that are quite interesting in general. The polar routes are always fun because you get a different look depending on the time of year and where the sun is at. On this one you max out at just above 87N which is way up there! So far that you lose your satcom datalink (as seen in the EICAS), and watching your heading change in real time without doing any turns as you round the northernmost point is always fun.

Also, so much of this route is TOTAL wilderness. This is true of many polar routes but I think you feel it even more on this route, because even near origin and destination, there's not much of anything even a little bit out. In the Western hemisphere, once you get past Montreal (maybe 1-1.5 hours) you enter the Canadian wilderness, and on the Eastern side it's hours of Russian tundra and Mongolian steppe, and even the bit of China north of Beijing is barren desert (the Gobi). At TOD it still looks completely wild, and most of the descent is pretty sparse because there's mountains northwest of Beijing - but then you near final approach and realize you're actually in a huge city. Otherwise, just thousands of miles of tundra and frozen ocean.  There's something surreal about that and really makes you appreciate how vast this planet is. 

Lastly, this route is not possible on a US carrier IRL today because of geopolitical reasons. Because this is a throwback and I wanted to simulate the flight I took as a kid, I disregarded that and kept the original route.

Hope you enjoyed this post as much as I enjoyed this flight, and maybe inspires a few of you to try a similar one yourself!

Polar route fun! 13.5 hours KEWR-ZBAA