Microsoft Flight Simulator – How to Increase/Decrease Speed

Increasing and decreasing your speed in Microsoft Flight Simulator is integral in maintaining flight.  There are a handful of ways that you can increase your speed in the game.  In this guide we’ll detail two different ways that you can increase and decrease your speed in Microsoft Flight Simulator.  These two methods include using the throttle, and changing the pitch up and down can increase and decrease speed as well.

Using the Throttle to Increase and Decrease Speed

The most intuitive way to increase and decrease your speed in Microsoft Flight Simulator is to use the throttle.  The throttle can be set at positions 0% – 100%.  The higher you set the throttle, the faster you can go. (Depending on other factors as well).  Setting the throttle is done differently depending on which control scheme you are using.

Increasing and Decreasing Throttle with Controller

You can use the A and B buttons on the Xbox controller to increase and decrease the throttle which will increase and decrease speed.

Increasing and Decreasing Throttle with Keyboard

You can increase and decrease the throttle by pressing the F1 and F2 buttons on the keyboard.

Manually increasing and decreasing throttle with mouse

Like other instruments and levers in the cockpit, you can interact with these things in the first person viewpoint by using the mouse.  Simply find the throttle and press and hold the mouse button to adjust the throttle to the desired level.

Throttle is a good way to increase and decrease your speed, but it’s not the only way.  Depending on position in the air or on the ground it might be easier to pitch the plane’s nose higher and lower to increase and decrease speed.  Pitching the plane lower can increase your speed, while climbing in altitude is a good way to decrease speed as well.