Description
Located southwest of London between Chobham and Chertsey in Surrey, Fairoaks is a general aviation airport operated by Fairoaks Operations Ltd.
Fairoaks opened as a private airstrip in 1931, but was used by the military from 1936 and became RAF Fairoaks during World War II. It was used as a training airfield, with No. 18 Elementary & Reserve Flying School equipped with De Havilland Tiger Moths. 6,000 pilots were trained at the airfield. In 1968 the Alan Mann Group took control of the airfield, later constructing the hard runway in 1979.
In 2015, it was announced that the airport would be closed to build a 1,500 unit housing development to be known as “Fairoaks Garden Village”. This has resulted in a years-long battle to save this historic airport. On 15 February 2022, the original control tower was decommissioned, being replaced by a temporary control room provided by Helipad Aviation Services located adjacent to taxiway B. Recent works to the west side of the airport, have also put taxiway A out of action.
Fairoaks Airport has been accurately recreated by Burning Blue Design’s modellers and coders with on-site visits, and features:
- Over 80 custom 3D objects have been created exclusively for Fairoaks airport, each with full Physical Based Rendering (PBR) textures.
- Based on 2022 visits to Fairoaks.
- Includes new ‘temporary’ control tower adjacent to taxiway B.
- High resolution colour corrected ground textures.
- Working custom Windsocks.
- Open hangar parking and café interiors.
- Two Isuzu TACR3 Fire Trucks with realistic liveries.
- Also included is ‘Firebird 3’, in honour of the retired Ford F-150 which was based at Fairoaks until 2019.
- Dynamic scenery and lighting, which change realistically depending on the time of day and weather.
- Correct Tower frequency, AI pattern procedures and accurate taxiway placement. (Taxiway A has been left active to reflect a fully operational airport)
- McLaren Technology Centre and Production Centre POI.
Image Gallery
MSFS stock Fairoaks vs Burning Blue Design Fairoaks
Installation Instructions
Once you have purchased and downloaded the product, double click on the zip file to open it. You should see the airport’s folder inside, this will need to be extracted and placed into your Microsoft Flight Simulator Community folder, if you don’t know where the community folder is, we have a full guide on how to install our packages here.
If you still have trouble locating your community folder this easy to follow video will help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhSkMzWLFR0
There is also a community tool called ModmanFX which makes installing and removing Microsoft Flight Simulator packages incredibly easy, you can get it here: https://www.msfsaddons.org/freeware/modmanfx
Known Bugs
- Transparent and translucent glass panes can appear very dark when subject to particle effects such as rain, snow and fog. This is a known bug that Asobo/Microsoft are aware of and will hopefully fix in the near future.
Requirements:
Minimum
Recommended
Further Information and Licensing:
A number of the static vehicles used within the scenery were 3D models used under the Creative Commons Attribution License. The models were reskinned to match their real life contemporaries. For further information and full attribution on any of the individual models please contact us here: https://burningbluedesign.com/contact/
Alexander Gill (verified owner) –
I have been waiting since the day MFS was released for a developer to produce Fairoaks – I was pleasantly surprised when Burning Blue Design announced their Fairoaks package after previously purchasing Farnborough (which is an incredible rendition of the airport and vicinity!). Being a local to Fairoaks and frequently walking around the airfield on my lunch breaks for plane spotting, I can certainly approve of the detail that Burning Blue Design have provided in this package – including the temporary control tower and lorry trailers in the southern section of the airfield! The site as a whole as incredible attention to detail and looks great at all angles – whether on the ground or in the air. Bravo to the team!
P.S – just a minor critical note – there is a fence on the eastern end of the runway shown on this product but in reality it is an open public footpath with no fence (planes fly just feet above your head when walking here!!). Hopefully Burning Blue Design can fix this in a future update 🙂
Mike Morgan –
Thanks for the positive comment! You’ll be pleased to know we’ve removed that pesky fence in the latest version of Fairoaks
Kevin Hindom (verified owner) –
I’ve never been to Fairoaks in real life, but after spending over an hour in this run down, dilapidated place in VR using my Reverb G2, I got a sense of brutal authenticity, not really experienced at any of the other 50 or so airports I own. Apparently, this is an airport facing closure, and in decline, and Mike has done a superb job conveying that in the textures. They are some of the most detailed and realistic I’ve seen.
Lots of developers do brilliantly atmospheric airports with detailed ground textures and clutter, but this place felt brutally real, in a grimy, dirty, decaying way that probably perfectly captures the real place.
Whether it’s the rusting, iron stairwell to the now abandoned terminal, or the broken glass on the ground next to some skips, the paint work peeling off the ugly prefabricated buildings, with their white doors covered in dirt and grime this place just absolutely authentic.
In the rain I bet this is a miserable looking place indeed, but I found it genuinely moving, and one of the best VR exploring experiences I’ve ever had.
I don’t think a monitor/flatscreen catches all of this detail, certainly I didn’t notice in when watching Youtube videos prior to purchase, but if, like me, you really like to get a feel of a place in VR, this is a memorable purchase and one I will definitely keep coming back to.
Mario Ottaway (verified owner) –
I had a look around this airport last night, very nice touch having what looks like a Ferrari Dino body shell on the back of a vehicle trolley painted in red! It’s beside the building with “Aircraft Charter & Management” sign. My feedback is from the ground this body shell appears to have two front wheel arches from the side view, but perhaps it’s just an illusion and I’m looking through to the left hand side.