“Descend via the MISTRAL arrival, welcome to the Côte d’Azur”
X-Plane 12.4.2 is a small but meaningful update. It brings a handful of important crash fixes, quality-of-life improvements, and some under-the-hood graphics engine work. As spring arrives in Europe, we thought it was the perfect moment to shine a spotlight on one of the French Riviera’s crown jewels.
Bienvenue sur la Côte d’Azur!
Nice Côte d’Azur Airport (LFMN) has been part of X-Plane 12 since the beginning, but with 12.4.2 it gets a complete overhaul. A huge thank you to Matthias Gerstberger, a retired airline pilot, who took the original airport’s scenery – generously gifted to us by Aerosoft – and poured an enormous amount of work into rebuilding and refining it. Matthias preserved the custom buildings from the original while pushing every detail as far as it could go. The result speaks for itself.
Nice Côte d’Azur is France’s third busiest airport and the second busiest outside of Paris, handling around 14 million passengers a year. It sits in a remarkable location, squeezed between the Mediterranean Sea to the south and the Alps to the north, with the city of Nice pressing in from the east. There is essentially no room to expand, which makes it one of the more operationally challenging airports in Europe.
Originally opened in 1945 on land partially reclaimed from the sea, the infrastructure has grown steadily ever since – with Terminal 2 and much of the current layout also built on reclaimed ground. Both runways (04L/22R and 04R/22L) run parallel to the coastline, meaning arrivals and departures often offer stunning views over the Baie des Anges.
The airport serves as a hub for easyJet and sees heavy traffic from Air France, with a strong mix of leisure and business traffic given the Côte d’Azur’s dual identity as both a holiday destination and a major business hub – Monaco is just 20 minutes away by car.
Gateway Update
We have a new round of airport updates. As always, these are the product of the spectacular work of the Gateway artists. Why don’t you pick up our World Editor today and have a go?
12.4.2 is in Public Beta now!
X-Plane 12.4.2 is available for testing today. Given the focused scope of this release, we’re calling it Release Candidate 1 from the start. We’re confident in what’s here and expect a short beta cycle.
For the complete list of changes, check out the full release notes.
Happy flying and enjoy the Côte d’Azur!
