Tailstrike and TFDi Design Unveil First-of-Its-Kind, Fully Persistent Shared Aircraft
October 3, 2026
Step into the cockpit exactly as the last pilot left it.
Starting today, the TFDi Design MD-11 on Tailstrike carries everything forward. Not just where the aircraft is parked and the fuel in its tanks. Every switch, every system, every failure, and the wear on its parts passes from one pilot to the next.
When you fly the MD-11 on Tailstrike, you are not flying a local sandbox that resets when your flight ends. You are flying one shared airframe with its own history, shaped by every pilot who flew it before you. How you fly changes the aircraft for whoever flies it next.
A living airframe
Every registration on Tailstrike is an aircraft that exists, just like a real one. It has a location, a history, and its basic state carried between flights. The TFDi Design MD-11 takes that concept all the way. Hundreds of systems and thousands of states carry forward on the network, so your actions inside the aircraft reach other pilots, and theirs reach you.
What that means in the cockpit
- Your actions carry forward. Land hard and blow a tire, and the next pilot finds it blown. Their choices reach you the same way.
- Checklists matter. The aircraft is in whatever state the last crew left it. Be diligent in your pre- and post-flight flows.
- Emergencies are truly emergent. Failures come from how real pilots have actually flown and maintained that exact aircraft over time.
- No two MD-11s are the same. Each registration builds its own history and identity, one flight at a time.
You choose how deep you go
High fidelity persistence is optional. Inside the Tailstrike plugin, you choose how each flight starts:
- Sync 1:1 with the last state of that exact MD-11.
- Sync basic values only: radios, squawk, altimeter and fuel. This works on every aircraft on Tailstrike, not just the MD-11.
- Sync nothing at all.
The only requirement is starting the flight at the right airport.
Pilots without Extended Simulation still load into the exact panel configuration the previous pilot left behind, over 1,000 states, just without the failures system. And after syncing to the Tailstrike state, any pilot can reset the aircraft to a vanilla state from the EFB, so you're never stranded with a damaged aircraft.
Built with TFDi Design
The TFDi Design MD-11, with its carefully modeled systems and simulated failures, is the ideal aircraft to bring a shared, persistent airframe to life.
"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. This sort of depth and shared experience is perfectly aligned with our vision for the aircraft." Collin Biedenkapp, Managing Director, TFDi Design
Extended Simulation adds persistent wear and failures to the MD-11. Together with the Tailstrike plugin, the aircraft now inherits and contributes to the wear, failures and maintenance of a shared airframe, not just a local one.
Handing the aircraft over
To pass the MD-11 on in high fidelity, park and shut down all engines after your flight. The Tailstrike plugin saves the full aircraft state while it sits parked. Confirm the state has saved before ending your lease, and the complete configuration will pass on to the next pilot using this aircraft.
Add your favorite MD-11 from real life
There are 21 MD-11 airframes on the network today. Tailstrike Supporters can endow new ones: permanently add a real-world registration to the network as a new airframe, available to every pilot immediately. When a Supporter endows an aircraft, their name stays on its profile forever.
Get flying
The Tailstrike MD-11 integration is live today on Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 and 2024 on PC. Create a free account at tailstrike.net, install the Tailstrike plugin, and sync your TFDi Design MD-11 in one click.
The MD-11 integration is available to everyone on the free tier. Flying on Tailstrike is free forever, open to all, and works with all major simulators and networks.
Own the TFDi Design MD-11? Redeem your product key in the Tailstrike app for a free month of Supporter. Create an account and redeem your key in your Account Settings.