What is the best Airbus A319 add-on for FSX?

For FSX and FSX: Steam Edition, the SAS Airbus A319 package is our best all-round freeware choice. It combines an FPS-friendly Gmax exterior, animated parts, a virtual cockpit and two SAS liveries in one complete download. Choose the Delta or United packages when their sounds, wing views or Project Airbus model matter more.

Which FSX Airbus A319 should you choose?

The SAS package offers the strongest balance of completeness, performance and cockpit usability. The three leading freeware choices serve slightly different priorities:

Why is the SAS A319 our best overall pick?

The SAS A319 wins because it is a complete aircraft rather than a texture-only repaint, while its FPS-friendly model suits the older, CPU-limited FSX engine. It gives most pilots what they need for normal gate-to-gate flying without requiring them to assemble a panel, model and liveries from separate downloads.

Choose it when frame rate, straightforward installation and an included virtual cockpit are more important than airline-specific details. The two supplied SAS liveries also provide variation without making the package unnecessarily large.

How realistic are these Airbus A319 add-ons?

These are conventional FSX freeware airliners, not study-level A319 simulations with every Airbus system reproduced. Their strengths are the exterior models, animations, liveries and accessible virtual cockpits; they are best suited to pilots comfortable with FSX-style avionics and simplified Airbus operation.

The Delta and United packages use a virtual cockpit based on the stock Airbus A321, which is useful for familiarity and compatibility but does not turn them into system-accurate A319 simulations. If aircraft variety matters more than choosing one specific model, our comparison of wider Airbus freeware options covers other families and their compatibility trade-offs.

Will an A319 add-on work in FSX: Steam Edition?

These aircraft use the standard FSX aircraft structure, so they can generally be installed in FSX: Steam Edition as well as the boxed simulator. The usual failure is an incorrect folder level, not a fundamental difference between the two editions.

1. Extract the download first. Do not try to run the aircraft directly from its compressed archive.
2. Find the actual aircraft folder. It should contain aircraft.cfg alongside folders such as model, panel, sound and one or more texture folders.
3. Copy that complete folder into the active installation's SimObjects\Airplanes directory. Steam libraries can be installed on a different drive, so do not assume the simulator is in the default Windows location.
4. Follow the included documentation for any separate gauges, effects or other supporting files. Do not move those files unless the package specifically instructs you to do so.
5. Restart FSX and locate the aircraft under the manufacturer, publisher or variation names defined by the package.

What if the A319 is missing its cockpit or sounds?

A missing aircraft usually means that an extra wrapper folder was copied into SimObjects\Airplanes. Open the installed folder and confirm that aircraft.cfg is not buried another level down.

• No virtual cockpit: confirm that the package includes its panel and model folders. For A321-based panels, keep the stock FSX Airbus A321 installed because the add-on may reference its resources.
• No sound: check that the sound folder and sound.cfg were copied. If the configuration aliases another FSX aircraft, that source aircraft must still be present.
• Aircraft does not appear: check for an incomplete extraction, a wrongly nested folder or duplicate title= entries in aircraft.cfg.
• Blank or black gauges: install only the gauge files explicitly supplied by the package, restart the simulator and accept any trusted-gauge prompt generated by FSX.

For most users, we would start with the SAS A319. Pick the Delta version for its sound package and wing views, or the United version when the Project Airbus exterior and tuned flight dynamics are the deciding factors.