Introduction
The following is the written version of this video review. Be sure to check out the video for the visuals.
Luxembourg Airport is the only international airport in the country of Luxembourg, the only airport in the country with a paved runway, and home to both Luxair and Cargolux. The airport sees regular service from Dash 8s, 747s, A320s, 737s, and more. While Atelic’s version of the airport is available for both MSFS and MSFS 2024, we will just be looking at the MSFS 2024 version in this review. Luxembourg Airport by Atelic for MSFS and MSFS 2024 is available for roughly $19 USD, 14 GBP, or 16 Euro with slight differences between the various popular flight sim distributors.
Commercial Terminals
Starting with the commercial passenger area, we find the two terminals, A and B, as well as plenty of stands both with and without jetways. The terminal buildings are well detailed and have modeled interiors. The terminal interiors are nicely representative of the airport based on references I can find online. Plenty of people models are scattered about, however looking closer, there is the occasional a person model clipping with another model.
The interiors are very visible from the gates so I do appreciate the effort that went into reproducing them. There is a lot of detail, large and small, around this area ranging from ground service equipment, bollards, lightposts with surveillance cameras, and more. The modeling and texturing of the buildings is nicely done and looks accurate based on the reference data I could find online.
Landside
Moving behind the terminal to the landside area, there’s a number of buildings modeled to fill in the area and an animated tram that takes different tracks into and out from the airport. It’s worth noting that the roads outside of the airport grounds don’t have markings on them. For the most part, this is fine, but for the sections of road under the approach path, it looks a bit odd.
The structures behind the terminal also do a decent job at representing the area, with additional smaller elements such as statues and other decorative and functional elements. The Luxembourg Skypark Business Center is a nice addition and has some people dotted around on its platforms, though a few are floating or untextured.
Ground Details
Moving behind the terminal to the landside area, there’s a number of buildings modeled to fill in the area and an animated tram that takes different tracks into and out from the airport. It’s worth noting that the roads outside of the airport grounds don’t have markings on them. For the most part, this is fine, but for the sections of road under the approach path, it looks a bit odd.
The structures behind the terminal also do a decent job at representing the area, with additional smaller elements such as statues and other decorative and functional elements. The Luxembourg Skypark Business Center is a nice addition and has some people dotted around on its platforms, though a few are floating or untextured.
Coming back into the airside portion, we can take a nice look at the ground textures. From my comparison to both Google and Bing maps, the ground textures are very accurate with markings having the proper appearance and positioning. They also remain fairly sharp up close. This level of detail is present for all markings throughout the airport and is even more up to date in some areas than Google or Bing maps.
If you know me, incorrect ground markings are a big pet peeve of mine, so seeing the attention to detail here is greatly appreciated. Even the markings that have been removed are still somewhat visible in reality, and Atelic has made them have a similar appearance in the sim where appropriate. Markings aside, the surfaces they’re applied to are also well made, with subtle signs of wear and use in a dirty environment.
Continuing with the ground, Luxembourg Airport is built on terrain with varied elevation. Atelic did a reasonable job at capturing this, though it’s not perfect. There are some areas where objects are either floating above or clipping into the ground and some parts of taxiway near the GA hangars are unuseably bumpy.
Another location with some ramp issues is near the Luxembourg Air Rescue hangar. The terrain slope is rather steep between the neighboring ramp here, so I suspect that has something to do with it. I know the dev tools to sculpt terrain like this aren’t the best so this isn’t fully on the developer, but some areas could use improvement. The areas were it’s done well are pretty stunning, such as on approach or near the fuel farm. Seeing devs take the time to implement terrain like this at airports that have it goes a long way.
Buildings Around the Airport
If you happen to have an in-sim failure item trigger, don’t worry because the maintenance facilities for both Cargolux and Luxair are both modeled on the south side of the airport. The same attention to detail seen in the terminal area has been applied here with both hangars open to view inside. Cargo pilots are also taken care of with the cargo ramp receiving the same care.
Checking out some of the smaller buildings, the air traffic control tower is nicely detailed and has a modeled interior, complete with coffee machines, but I won’t rest until these are fully functional, too. Further west, an older style hangar is modeled complete with interior. There are also multiple Air Rescue hangars and general aviation hangars with a flight school. While tucked away, I still think it would have been nice to see the flight school’s display aircraft modeled.
Seasons and AI
Moving through the months of the year, the scenery blends nicely with the surroundings and snow cover in winter looks pretty realistic. Using BeyondATC as my traffic software of choice combined with AIG and default traffic models, I noticed no issues with AI traffic path finding getting to or from the gates.
Night Lighting and Performance
At night, the lighting throughout the airport is pretty realistic and about what I’d expect given the positions of the light poles. I do feel the cargo ramp was a bit too lit though, particularly the main taxi paths into and out of this area, given there aren’t any lights there and they’re mostly concentrated around the stands themselves. Lighting within the terminals also appears to be representative of the real thing.
I recall seeing the initial release having performance issues, however on my computer with version 1.0.1+patch1 installed according to Contrail, I noticed no major drops or other issues. My hardware specs are in the video description for reference.
Conclusion
While Luxembourg may not be the hotbed of activity or routes that some other major European airports are, it still offers its own unique experience. Flying large cargo jets into this single runway airport with varied terrain all around is enjoyable on its own, and as a secondary airport, plenty of routes are available to the larger and busier destinations throughout Europe. Not to mention chartered cargo flights anywhere in the world. For the price of a modest restaurant meal, including tip if you’re American, the amount of detail and accuracy you get in this airport seems well worth the price. Seeing relatively newer developers come out with airports of this quality is exciting to see and I am looking forward to more.
Video produced by: Tom’s Planes
