Retro Flight Simulator 2026 V1.703 Fixes Autopilot Routing on Long-Haul Flights
Update V1.703 for Retro Flight Simulator 2026, published 5 August 2026, targets a specific and consequential class of problem: autopilot navigation breaking down during long-haul flights, particularly on East Asia–Europe corridors.
The most dramatic symptom was an autopilot that would abandon its planned route and turn east after crossing the Lake Baikal region. The root cause appears to have been a world-coordinate wrap error capable of generating an invalid, extremely long route segment during intercontinental flight — a single corrupt segment that then cascaded into wrong distance readings, broken descent calculations, and misdirected progress tracking.
What changed
- Fixed the Lake Baikal autopilot defection, where the aircraft would turn east off the planned route
- Corrected the world-coordinate wrap error producing invalid intercontinental route segments
- Prevented autopilot from latching onto previous or incorrect route segments
- Fixed route progress, remaining distance, and descent calculations tied to invalid segments
- Added automatic recovery for save files already affected by the bug
- Updated route generation to avoid North Korean territory, with an exception for flights departing from or arriving at North Korean airports
- Corrected the ICN–LHR route to fly westbound through the Yellow Sea, China, and Mongolia/Central Asia rather than toward Russia's Far East
- Improved longitude normalization for destinations near the global coordinate boundary
- Improved route-direction logic for European, North American, Japanese, and Russian Far East destinations
The save-file recovery addition is notable: players mid-campaign on affected routes should not need to abandon their progress.